Midnight solar flare

Around this time of year, we have the midnight sun and one very long day! The midnight sun is nicely viewed from KAIRA and it is always calm and peaceful. Of course that's not always the case at the sun itself.

A few weeks back we caught a solar flare very close to the local solar midnight. Due to the equation of time, the application of daylight-savings/summer time in Europe, and our location, the minimum elevation of the Sun is not exactly at clock midnight.

However, very close to the point of minimum elevation (and the Sun crossing the northen meridian), KAIRA caught this solar flare.

Midnight solar flare! (Image: D. McKay-Bukowski)

Given that the elevation of the sun was quite low (approx. +2 degrees), this must have been a bright flare!

Our northern summer solstice occurs at 10:51 UTC on 21 June 2014.