Is the Sun getting quieter? New observations baffle Indian astronomers

Indian astronomers have observed a contradictory development on the Sun which has been comparatively quieter, even as it wakes up in a new solar cycle. Scientists at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru have observed that the Coronal Mass Ejections from the Sun during the 2008-2019 period have significantly decreased in mass, size as well as the internal pressure of explosive phenomena. In a study published in Frontiers in Astronomy & Space Science, astronomers tried to understand the expansion behaviour of coronal mass ejections and their interplanetary counterparts in solar cycles 23 and 24. STUDYING CORONAL MASS EJECTIONS Led by Dr Wageesh Mishra of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, scientists showed that the average radial size of CMEs in the last decades is only two-thirds of what it was in the previous cycle. The development was baffling since reduced ambient pressure implied that CMEs were expanding into interplanetary space to a significantly larger size, expectedly giving rise to a larger radial size.