SDO images of the February 15th X2 Solar Flare

It has been a while since I've had any time to even think about astronomy, but today I've got to do some work on a final grant report and while waiting for some software I need to download I thought I'd make some false color images of before and after last week's X2 class solar flare (Feb 15, 2011, 0152 UTC). This is the first X-class flare of the new solar cycle.

The left hand side shows 4500 Angstrom (in red), 1600 Angstrom (in green) and 94 Angstrom (in blue) images taken with the Solar Dynamics Observatory's AIA instrument superimposed on one another. The right hand panels are 304 Angstrom (red), 193 Angstrom (green) and 94 Angstrom (blue).

Something I mean to do is to find out by how much the Sun's EUV/X-ray luminosity increases during flaring, and what contribution to the total solar bolometric luminosity the normal and active corona provide.

Image were obtained in FITS format from the Virtual Solar Observatory, and superimposed using ds9.