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In their quest to identify and track potentially grievous sunspots veil on the far side of the sun , scientists have turned to an unlikely ally : NASA ’s Perseverance rover onMars .
Normally , the far side of the sun rest obliterate from us and our space telescopes , which are position in ambit around Earth or at our satellite ’s Lagrange points , where objects can be permanently station . This mean that we do not have a clear opinion of what is happening on the far side of the solar control surface . As a result , astronomers are often surprised by elephantine macula that seem abruptly on the Lord’s Day ’s near side as our home star rotates at the heart of thesolar system .
NASA’s Perseverance rover has a new job — hunting for hidden sunspots.
Largesunspotsare more likely to spit out powerful solar flair and coronal mass ejections ( CMEs ) that can thrash into Earth and trigger potentially severe geomagnetic storms , regardless of whether we can see the dark patches . This mean we can be caught off guard by extreme space conditions issue . In January , for exercise , a hide macula on the sun ’s far sidespat out a surprise X - year flare pass — the most knock-down grade ofsolar flare — which narrowly lack Earth .
But the Red Planet is currently set toward the paired side of the sunshine as Earth is , which gives Perseverance a clear view of the sun ’s far side . Using images of the sun accept by the rover ’s two Mastcam - ezed television camera , scientists can detect gravid sunspots before they become visible to us , thereby improving space weather predictions , Spaceweather.comrecently report .
Related : See the first clear image of ' sun rays ' on Mars in eery fresh NASA photograph
In this image captured by Perseverance’s left Mastcam-Z camera on July 19, there are at least three visible large sunspots.
In recent weeks , Perseverance has blemish two major sunspots before they launched powerful solar violent storm toward Earth . The scouter spotted a goliath macula that finally grew to be around 10 time broad than Earth andlaunched an X - grade flair that hit our satellite on July 2 . perseveration also glimpse a macula that helped to set up a"cannibal CME " that hit our planet on July 18 .
These sunspots , and others like them , can also be detected by a method acting known as helioseismology , which measures vibrations in the Dominicus ’s magnetised flying field to grow an echo of the far side . However , this technique can often be irregular and fail to correctly describe the scale of larger macula , according to Spaceweather.com .
doggedness ’s images have a low resoltuion , and they can be used only to identify sunspots that are more than 9,300 miles ( 15,000 kilometer ) in diameter , or roughly as broad as 1.2 Earths . But this still set aside the rover to catch around 40 % of sunspots and most of the ones that could do us harm , which makes it a great pecker to use alongside helioseismology when Mars is orientate in the right place , researchers indite in a paper published in theBulletin of the American Astronomical Societyin January .
NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit captured this image of the sun setting on Mars in 2005.
This is even more helpful consider the Dominicus is presently ramping up toward the solar level best , the most alive phase of the roughly 11 - year solar oscillation , which couldhit us sooner and harder than ab initio wait . As a result , the number of macula ishigher than it has been in more than 20 years .
— 1 million - knot - foresighted plasma plume shoot out of the Lord’s Day in stunning picture
— Photographers capture the exact moment a giant violent storm blasts out of the sunlight during a full solar occultation
— uprise and setting ' Z sun ' melts into a ' lava - like blob ' in trippy mirage pic
Perseverance ’s sight of the sun ’s far side will in reality better in the fare months as Mars becomes even more align with the side of the sun hidden from Earth , which will help the automaton to track increasingly knock-down storms . However , the rover will likely be unable to attend to us during some of the visor month of the solar maximum .
This is not the first time that scientists have wrench to the Red Planet to track sunspots . In 2015 , in the months following the previous solar maximum , scientists used NASA ’s Curiosity rover to snap pictures of the sun ’s far side , Live Science ’s baby siteSpace.comreported at the time . But Curiosity ’s images had a low resolution than Perseverance ’s photograph , and solar action was already set off to slacken down by then .
