The sun is getting stormier, and it’ll peak before a total solar eclipse

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For all we’ve learned about the sun, our home star remains shrouded in mystery. Now, after seven years of relative calm, the sun is set to become more temperamental—and a fleet of sun-gazing spacecraft are ready to watch as it awakens. Those spacecraft are offering scientists an unprecedented chance to study our stormy star and the ways it can affect our cosmic neighborhood. 

Like broods of cicadas that periodically emerge and vanish, the sun cycles between periods of storm and slumber over the course of 11 years or so. These cycles are linked to the sun’s internal magnetic activity, and are betrayed by telltale phenomena such as sunspots and solar flares.

Scientists keep a close eye on the sun’s temperament because solar outbursts can wreak havoc on our power grids and communication systems—technologies that are vital for modern civilization—as well as any human and robotic explorers in orbit and beyond. But understanding the oft-invisible threads that tie the sun to its planetary system has been tricky. 

“It still gives me goosebumps when I think about it,” says NASA’s Madhulika Guhathakurta, a solar physicist. “I think I stayed on at NASA headquarters for one—and only one—mission, and that is Parker Solar Probe.”

Perhaps even more thrilling for space fans, the peak of this cycle is expected to happen very close to the time a total solar eclipse will be visible from North America, in April 2024. When the moon blots out the sun, people in the path of totality will be able to see the delicate, diaphanous halo of the sun’s upper atmosphere, or corona, and it should be a spectacular sight so close to solar maximum.

“It will have the appearance of stuff coming out from everywhere, very dynamic,” Guhathakurta says.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/the-sun-is-getting-stormier-just-in-time-for-a-total-solar-eclipse

[Angelina Stefania 427]

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