Solar Radio Bursts - Time-Series Video Movies

Some recent Solar Radio Bursts made into short video movies from data collected by our Callisto Radio Spectrometers at Sunnydale.  This movie capability, very kindly developed for us by Manuel Prieto from UAH in Madrid, is still experimental.  Initially inspired by Peter wanting to be able to view ionospheric caustics & continuum events in a longer format than the usual .png images, these .mp4 movies (approx. 1.5 minutes each) are small enough to post here.  Each SRB movie is a 75 minute scan of radio emissions from the Sun.  The scan frequencies are indicated by the scale to the left of each image and the relative SRB intensity is indicated by the scale to the right of each image.

Continuum - November 29th, 2024

Just a nice little CTM - continuum event that had begun the previous day and concluded early on the 29th.

Type II & Type IV burst - October 24th, 2024

These solar radio bursts were the result of a strong X3.2 solar flare associated with Sunspot region 3869.  The estimated velocity of the Type II burst was 610km/sec or about 2,200,000km/hr.  Unlike other videos on this page, this is a 105 minute scan of the Sun and the movie runs for 2 minutes, 30 seconds.

Type III, Type II & Type IV burst with noise storm -
October 9th, 2024

These solar radio bursts were the result of a strong X1.84 solar flare associated with Sunspot region 3848.  The estimated velocity of the Type II burst was 5,176km/sec or about 18,640,000km/hr.  Unlike other videos on this page, this is a 375 minute scan of the Sun and the movie runs for 3 minutes, 20 seconds.

Type II burst - August 5th, 2024

This Type II solar radio burst was the result of a strong M6.1 solar flare.  The flare was associated with Sunspot region 3780, a cluster of 33 sunspots at the time of the burst.  The estimated velocity was 443km/sec or about 1,560,000km/hr.

Type III & II burst - August 2nd, 2024

This Type III solar radio burst was followed by a Type II burst soon after and then another small Type III.

Type II burst - July 28th, 2024

This Type II solar radio burst was the result of a strong M9.7 solar flare.  The flare was associated with Sunspot region 3766, which was a cluster of 13 sunspots at the time of this flare.  The estimated velocity was 943km/sec or about 3,460,000km/hr.

Type II burst - June 21st, 2024

This Type II solar radio burst was the result of a moderate C6.7 solar flare.  There were no associated Sunspot reported with this event and while the flare was not considered large, it certainly produced a spectacular burst as shown here and on another page of the website.


If you spotted the error in the video, give yourself a pat on the back.  At the top of the frame is the date 20240622 but the first frame actually begins at 20240621 23:15UT.  The video process determines the date of the movie from the final frame and because this movie crosses midnight UT into the following day so we get the date 20240622 in the title.  A minor problem that may or may not be resolved at some point, I did say it was experimental .

Type II / IV burst - June 8th, 2024

This Type II & Type IV solar radio burst was the result of a highly eruptive, long duration M9.7 (R2-moderate) solar flare.  Sunspot region 3697 was close to the west limb and at 01:49 UTC the region produced a bright coronal mass ejection,  flare solar protons started to arrive at Earth shortly afterward. 


At the time, space weather services were reporting that we were in a moderate S2 solar radiation storm but we briefly crossed the strong S3 solar radiation threshold, making this event the first time we reached the S3 threshold since 2017 and the strongest solar radiation storm of the current Solar Cycle thus far.

Spectral Caustics
January 30th, 2022

This short video clip has been included here to show what can happen during a noise storm event.  While noise storms happen regularly, this particular event held some surprises.  At 03:41UT, a very nice observation of spectral caustics occurred.  The ionosphere acts like a lens for electro-magnetic waves (here a solar noise storm) and concentrates on a specific location on Earth.  This would be a rare event on any day but having reviewed the complete video of this noise storm, which began around 2245UT on the 29th and our final images for the day at 0915UT on the 30th, there was another (smaller) lensing occurred at 0029UT which had not been noticed previously.  In both instances, the lensing occurred around the image transition on the quarter hour, so it is not surprising that the smaller event had been missed.