Posted on Aug 13, 2023
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Solar physicist learning more about the sun . . .
" 'After looking at six years' worth of data, out popped this excess of gamma rays,' Meher Un Nisa, a postdoctoral research associate at Michigan State University and co-author of a new paper about the findings released Wednesday (Aug. 3), said in a statement. 'When we first saw it, we were like, 'We definitely messed this up. The sun cannot be this bright at these energies.' "
"It's all thanks to a unique lens on the cosmos called the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory, or HAWC. In short, this observatory, completed in the spring of 2015, is a facility specifically designed to observe particles associated with very high-energy gamma rays and cosmic rays, the latter of which are equally energetic but also mysterious in that they often travel across the universe without exhibiting a clear starting point."
" 'After looking at six years' worth of data, out popped this excess of gamma rays,' Meher Un Nisa, a postdoctoral research associate at Michigan State University and co-author of a new paper about the findings released Wednesday (Aug. 3), said in a statement. 'When we first saw it, we were like, 'We definitely messed this up. The sun cannot be this bright at these energies.' "
"It's all thanks to a unique lens on the cosmos called the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Observatory, or HAWC. In short, this observatory, completed in the spring of 2015, is a facility specifically designed to observe particles associated with very high-energy gamma rays and cosmic rays, the latter of which are equally energetic but also mysterious in that they often travel across the universe without exhibiting a clear starting point."
Sun blasts out highest-energy radiation ever recorded, raising questions for solar physics
Posted from space.com
Astronomy
Physics
Posted 9 mo ago
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SGT Mary G. simply amazing... thanks for sharing.
..."The first time scientists observed gamma rays with energies of more than a billion electron volts, according to the release, was in 2011 with NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. But Fermi had a limit. It maxed out at finding gamma rays with about 200 billion electron volts. So in 2015, the new study's research team started collecting gamma ray data with HAWC as this observatory didn't seem to have the same restriction.
"They nudged us and said, 'We're not seeing a cutoff. You might be able to see something," Nisa said.
Which brings us to the present — the first time we've seen sun rays with energies extending into a trillion electron volts. And, according to Nisa, that does not appear to be the maximum.
"We thought we had this star figured out, but that's not the case."...
..."The first time scientists observed gamma rays with energies of more than a billion electron volts, according to the release, was in 2011 with NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. But Fermi had a limit. It maxed out at finding gamma rays with about 200 billion electron volts. So in 2015, the new study's research team started collecting gamma ray data with HAWC as this observatory didn't seem to have the same restriction.
"They nudged us and said, 'We're not seeing a cutoff. You might be able to see something," Nisa said.
Which brings us to the present — the first time we've seen sun rays with energies extending into a trillion electron volts. And, according to Nisa, that does not appear to be the maximum.
"We thought we had this star figured out, but that's not the case."...
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