First Images of the Sun’s Flares Released From a New Space Telescope

Forecasters will soon be able to use the instrument, a coronagraph, to better monitor the effects of solar storms.

Before the northern lights fill the night sky on Earth with their eerie neon glow, a blast of electrified gas flares up from the sun’s surface. And scientists are now getting a powerful new view of how those ejections move through the corona, the sun’s tempestuous outer atmosphere.

On Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration unveiled the first imagery from its newest telescope in space. Meteorologists will use pictures from the device to help them better forecast space weather, including when you can expect to see auroras.

The new instrument is called the Compact Coronagraph, or CCOR-1. It launched in June aboard GOES-19, the newest of NOAA’s fleet of weather satellites. The coronagraph can continuously monitor the sun, and it will send data to scientists on the ground every 15 minutes.

“The forecasts can always count on it,” said James Spann, the senior scientist of space weather observations at NOAA, which operates the satellite. He added that CCOR-1 was the first coronagraph devoted to forecasting.

In the past, scientists have relied on imagery from satellites that are primarily used for longer-term scientific research, including an instrument on SOHO, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, a joint mission by NASA and the European Space Agency. But according to Dr. Spann, research satellites aren’t designed for continuously gathering data, meaning that forecasters may be left blind to solar activity for hours.

CCOR-1 is one solution to that.