Haimin Wang

On October 1, 2024, a class X7.1 flare erupted on the Sun — one of the most powerful. Two spacecraft, HXI and STIX, watched it from different angles, like two eyes, and together with a computer model helped reconstruct the three-dimensional picture.

The solar corona (the outer atmosphere of the Солнца, heated to millions of degrees) glows in ultraviolet light, but these rays are absorbed by the air and never reach Earth. Direct images of the corona from space have only been available since the 1990s.