The fiery life cycle of a massive solar storm has been observed for the first time

SSolar flares can wreak havoc on Earth, disrupting radio communications, cutting off electricity, and causing satellites to crash. “Even signals on railway lines can be affected and turn from red to green or vice versa.” He explained Louise Harrah of the Davos Physical Meteorological Observatory. “This is really scary.”

Unfortunately, these flares can be difficult to predict. This is partly because, rather than just sitting idle at the center of our solar system, the Sun rotates on its axis once every 28 days, meaning we can only observe solar storms forming on its surface for a couple of weeks before disappearing from view. Or at least that was the case before the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the Solar Orbiter mission in 2020.

This spacecraft orbits the Sun every six months, observing the far side of the Sun while researchers on Earth watch the near side. Recently, Hara and Ioannis Kontogiannis of ETH Zurich collected data from both locations, where they observed a powerful solar storm forming — the strongest in more than 20 years — for an unprecedented 94 days. they published Their findings in Astronomy and astrophysics.

Read more: “A 315-year-old scientific experiment”

“This is the longest continuous series of images ever created of a single active region: a milestone in heliophysics,” Kontogiannis said. Using Solar Orbiter, the team was able to watch the magnetic storm form, grow in complexity, glow, and then decay.

They hope that these unprecedented observations will improve the accuracy of solar storm predictions so that we can better understand Earth and ultimately be better prepared for them. While the Solar Orbiter has proven indispensable to this mission, scientists are still unable to use it to predict the intensity of solar flares, but help is on the way.

“We are currently developing a new space probe at ESA called Vigil that will be dedicated exclusively to improving our understanding of space weather,” Hara said. That spacecraft is scheduled to be launched in 2031.

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Main image: ESA/AOES

• Jake Corey

  Posted on January 15, 2026

  Jake Corey is a writer based in Brooklyn, New York.