DALLAS — Scientists are starting to figure out what causes tiny eruptions on the sun called campfire flares.
Campfires were discovered in 2020, when the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter probe snapped closeup photos of our parent star and spotted diminutive flickers of ultraviolet light (SN: 7/16/20). The flashes resemble more massive explosions such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections but are only a millionth or a billionth the size.
Using observations of 52 campfires, solar physicist Navdeep Panesar and her colleagues tracked these bursts from their beginnings. The team noticed that nearly 80 percent of the campfires were preceded by a dark structure made from cool plasma,
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