Dr Mateja Dumbović, PhD, Research Associate from the Hvar Observatory of the University of Zagreb Faculty of Geodesy, together with colleagues from Austria, Russia, U.S.A., Belgium, and China published a paper in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics describing a peculiar solar storm that happened on International Women’s Day 2019.

Solar storms are the most violent eruptions in the Solar System, fuelled by the magnetic energy of the Sun. These streams of magnetized plasma expelled from the Sun travel through the interplanetary space and may create radiation hazards for astronauts and induce currents disturbing space- and ground-based technological systems.

The all-female research team unravelled how on 8 March 2019, a double structure erupted from the Sun, resulting in a plethora of phenomena observed across the electromagnetic spectrum, eventually merging into a single structure that sped toward the Earth. Through a combination of remote and in situ observations, the study reveals the finesse of the physics that underlies solar storms and contributes to accurate predictions of hostile space weather events.

This research has been conducted through the research project recently awarded to Dr Dumbović, Interaction of COronal HOles and Solar Storms– ICOHOSS.

Read more about this work here.