{"id":475217,"date":"2026-03-14T12:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T12:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/475217\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T12:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T12:34:08","slug":"volunteers-find-oddly-high-solar-flare-rates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/475217\/","title":{"rendered":"Volunteers Find Oddly High Solar Flare Rates"},"content":{"rendered":"

Patches of the Sun\u2019s surface often show strong magnetic fields. These fields can emerge within a matter of hours, and can decay slowly or quickly, sometimes over days, weeks, or even months. Thanks to a new study about these long-lived active regions<\/a>, we now know much more about the patches where these strong magnetic fields take at least a month to decay.<\/p>\n

This study relied on inputs from NASA\u2019s Solar Active Region Spotter citizen science project, which asked volunteers to answer a series of questions about pairs of active region images from NASA\u2019s Solar Dynamics Observatory.<\/p>\n

Project leads Emily Mason (Predictive Science Inc.) and Kara Kniezewski (Air Force Institute of Technology) looked at the data and the analysis done by volunteers. They found that the long-lived active regions produce disproportionately more flares than the shorter-lived regions and are 3-6 times more likely than other active regions to be the source of the most intense kinds of solar flares. These results are a strong indication that long-lived active regions are crucial for predicting space weather and could provide critical information on magnetic fields deeper inside the Sun.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Solar Active Region Spotter project is now complete, but you can learn more about the results here: https:\/\/www.zooniverse.org\/projects\/eimason\/solar-active-region-spotter\/about\/results<\/a><\/p>\n

Explore NASA Citizen Science projects you can join today to help advance our understanding of space weather: https:\/\/go.nasa.gov\/3ZK6nvE.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Patches of the Sun\u2019s surface often show strong magnetic fields. These fields can emerge within a matter of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":475218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[46158,65154,90,44648,416,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-475217","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-citizen-science","9":"tag-heliophysics-division","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-solar-flares","12":"tag-space","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/475218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}