The Active Sun

Figure obtained from: Astronomy Picture of the Day

           The picture above was taken from astronomy picture of the day. It was posted on March 15^th 2012. The pictures are of the gamma-ray sky and some recent activity that has occurred very close to home.  When one takes a picture of the sky in the gamma ray region of the electromagnetic spectrum usually the most exotic and energetic of astrophysical environments can be observed.  An example would be like the active galaxies such as quasars. These are very small galaxies that look like stars and they are powered by supermassive black holes. Another example that is shown above would be a dense pulsar. A pulsar is a rapidly rotation neutron star that emits regular radio waves at rates around one thousand pulses per second.  One can see that in the bottom picture the Sun lights up part of the gamma ray sky. This is due to a massive solar flare that occurred on March 7^th. This is just one of the recent solar eruptions that have occurred.  This solar flare had energies up to 1 billion times the energy of visible light photons. This is amazing because on most other days the Sun would not show up in these gamma ray images because they do not have the massive amounts of energy.  The Sun will most likely shine again in the gamma ray sky in the not so distinct future because we are approaching a sunspot maximum. This is the period of time when the Sun will increase in activity. This increase in activity may have effects on Earth. One of the main effects would be auroras. As well the charged particles that are coming off of the Sun during this active time may disrupt radio and electrical transmissions. It will be neat to follow this increase in the Sun’s activity!