solar explosions

See all those really bright regions on the Sun in this X-ray picture? We call these active regions and they are the places where solar flares happen.

Even though it might seem as if the Sun gives off a constant amount of light and heat, it actually changes a lot. Although you'd never realise it from here on Earth, there are huge explosions happening on the Sun's surface all the time.

You can see these explosions best in a false colour X-ray picture.

Take a look at this X-ray movie from the YOHKOH satellite. See how the Sun’s corona changes over a period of a few days.

It's a good job we're 150,000,000 km away from all this activity. You wouldn't want to be close to the source of all those X-rays.

Are flares dangerous? Why does a flare erupt? Follow our trail to find out how much we know and what more we need to know.

Here's an X-ray movie of the Sun , covering a few hours, taken by the YOHKOH spacecraft. Did you see that massive explosion on the right? It was so big that the camera couldn't soak up all the X-rays it saw from that small area - it was overloaded - and produced that long vertical white streak in the images.