Volunteers Find High Flare Rates in Long-Lived Active Regions

Patches of the Sun’s surface often show strong magnetic fields that can emerge within a matter of hours and then decay slowly or quickly, sometimes over days, weeks, or even months. A new study focused on those long-lived active regions — the patches where strong magnetic fields take at least a month to decay — and reveals more about their behavior.

The research used inputs from NASA’s Solar Active Region Spotter citizen science project, which asked volunteers to answer a series of questions about pairs of active region images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Project leads Emily Mason (Predictive Science Inc.) and Kara Kniezewski (Air Force Institute of Technology) examined the volunteers’ data and analysis and found that long-lived active regions produce disproportionately more flares and are 3–6 times more likely than other active regions to be the source of the most intense kinds of solar flares.

United States

sun, active regions, magnetic fields, solar flares, long-lived regions, sdo, nasa, citizen science, emily mason, kara kniezewski