By Mark Prigg For Dailymail.com
Published: 19:32 GMT, 30 January 2019 | Updated: 19:32 GMT, 30 January 2019
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A stunning montage of 365 images have revealed the day by day changes on the solar surface in 2018.
The images were taken by ESA’s Proba-2 satellite.
It reveals just how quiet the sun has been.
The Sun typically follows an 11 year cycle of activity, and throughout 2018, it embraced its solar minimum, displaying few active regions – seen as the bright regions in the images.
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This sequence of 365 images shows the changing activity of our Sun through the eyes of ESA’s Proba-2 satellite during 2018. The images were taken by the satellite’s SWAP camera, which works at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths to capture the Sun’s hot turbulent atmosphere – the corona, at temperatures of about a million degrees. The satellite is continuously monitoring the Sun – one image was selected to represent each day of the year.
As solar minimum approaches, certain types of activity - such as sunspots and solar flares - drop, but it’s also expected to increase long-lived phenomena.
This includes coronal holes, where fast moving solar winds are created when the star’s magnetic field opens up into space.
Charged particles make their way out into the solar system through these gaps and hit the atmosphere of our planet., which can lead to magnetic storms which can result in power grid fluctuations, impact on satellite operations and can affect migratory animals.
An increase in solar winds can also alter the chemistry of Earth’s upper atmosphere, which may trigger more lightning and aid in cloud formation.
It can also affect air travel, as more radiation is able to penetrate planes.
The 365 images images were taken by the satellite’s SWAP camera, which works at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths to capture the Sun’s hot turbulent atmosphere – the corona, at temperatures of about a million degrees.
The satellite is continuously monitoring the Sun, and researchers selected one image to represent each day of the year.
One way to assess the level of activity is by counting sunspots (dark spots in the images), or recording the strength of solar flares.
The most energetic flare of 2018 was recorded on 7 February, from a small region located at central latitudes in the eastern hemisphere of the Sun (to the left of the centre of the Sun in the corresponding image).
It was classed as a ‘C-8.1’ in the
