Recent Comments

    hard X-rays tagged posts

    Solar research: NASA Sounding Rocket Instrument spots signatures of long-sought small Solar Flares

    October 15, 2017, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The NASA-funded FOXSI instrument captured new evidence of small solar flares, called nanoflares, during its December 2014 flight on a suborbital sounding rocket. Nanoflares could help explain why the Sun's atmosphere, the corona, is so much hotter than the surface. Here, FOXSI's observations of hard X-rays are shown in blue, superimposed over a soft X-ray image of the Sun from JAXA and NASA's Hinode solar-observing satellite. Credit: JAXA/NASA/Hinode/FOXSI

    The NASA-funded FOXSI instrument captured new evidence of small solar flares, called nanoflares, during its December 2014 flight on a suborbital sounding rocket. Nanoflares could help explain why the Sun’s atmosphere, the corona, is so much hotter than the surface. Here, FOXSI’s observations of hard X-rays are shown in blue, superimposed over a soft X-ray image of the Sun from JAXA and NASA’s Hinode solar-observing satellite. Credit: JAXA/NASA/Hinode/FOXSI

    Like most solar sounding rockets, the second flight of the FOXSI instrument – short for Focusing Optics X-ray Solar Imager – lasted 15 minutes, with just 6 minutes of data collection...

    Read More