British Solar Astrophysicist at @LASPatCU ☀️ “Little Book of Eclipses” & “Space Hazards”, are out now! 📚
Joined April 2010
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12 May 2024
It's been a crazy week on social media, so hello to all my new followers! I'm a Sun scientist researching solar flares, and value the importance of communicating the facts (and combating the fiction) of that science to the world. My first book, The Sun, was published last year ☀️
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A beautiful filament of plasma erupted from near the Sun’s north pole today! Beautiful stuff.
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Dr. Ryan French retweeted
Jun 13
First ever @astronomyontap in Boulder and it just so happened to showcase the Sun by none other than @RyanJFrench!
Very cool to hear everyone around me in awe over the Sun, space weather, and the aurora. 💛 ☀️
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Jun 4
Yesterday the Sun did this, and today we have the world’s largest solar telescope (the 4m diameter ‘Inouye Solar Telescope’) pointing at the same region for a few hours – as part of our solar flare observing proposal! Fingers crossed that the Sun’s fireworks continue today.
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Jun 4
For those who hadn’t seen already, there are currently three coronal mass ejections en route to the Earth (launched by solar flares on the Sun yesterday). We are expecting these eruptions to merge together, reaching Earth and triggering a strong geomagnetic storm tonight!
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Jun 4
A strong geomagnetic storm could bring aurora down to mid-latitudes (perhaps even lower for short bursts), with no notable adverse effects on technology expected.
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Jun 4
(Sorry for being slow with reporting this. I’d hoped to make more content yesterday, but have been dealing with a family emergency)
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Jun 3
The Sun just produced a large Earth-facing solar flare, almost surpassing the threshold for the ‘strongest solar flare’ category. However, it appears this flare produced no notable eruption, meaning the event is now over with (probably) nothing currently heading our way.
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Jun 3
There was a small solar flare earlier in the day, which did produce a small coronal mass ejection. This smaller event may cause some enhanced aurora, but we’re not expecting anything significant.
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Jun 3
Update: I stand corrected, as there likely was a faint eruption associated with the X9-class solar flare last night. However, this is small compared to the larger event that just now happened – post coming soon.
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Jun 3
The Sun has really woken up today, with some beautiful edge-on filament eruptions addition to the Earth-directed solar flares we just experienced. Our local star is certainly beautiful!
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Dr. Ryan French retweeted
May 18
My new book releases next month!! ‘Little Book of Eclipses’, co-authored with the brilliant @tomkerss, explores the science, history and culture of both solar and lunar eclipses, alongside over a decade of eclipse maps for upcoming eclipses.
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May 30
For anybody interested, I am starting (in ~1 hour) a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” in r/sun. If you have any question about the Sun, space weather, eclipses, etc – stick them in over there!
reddit.com/r/sun/s/Eh8NzxZdL…
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May 28
This eruptive solar flare (from March 2025) is one of my favourite solar events in recent years. I’ve been revisiting this flare recently, as I’ve been analysing some exciting data (not pictured here) of the event! I’ll share those observations later this year.
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May 28
This movie combines data from SDO/AIA, GOES/SUVI (both observing extreme ultraviolet light), with white light coronagraph observations from SOHO/LASCO.
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May 26
Today I (alongside 54k other runners) ran Bolder Boulder : “America’s All-Time Best 10K”. Today’s race marks a year since my first run beyond 5k, having since progressed to running a marathon earlier this month. I’m still not quick by any means, but thrilled with my progress!
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May 18
My new book releases next month!! ‘Little Book of Eclipses’, co-authored with the brilliant @tomkerss, explores the science, history and culture of both solar and lunar eclipses, alongside over a decade of eclipse maps for upcoming eclipses.
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May 18
It’s available from wherever you get your books, available to preorder now! It releases on the 4th of June in the UK, and 7th of July in the USA. There is also a Spanish edition available! It’s available from wherever you get your books, available to preorder now!
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May 18
(Cat was concerned as to why I was paying more attention to the books than her)
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May 15
Here is a unique view of a solar flare, captured by the NASA IRIS space telescope last month. We’re used to seeing ‘saturated’ images of flares, but this movie shows an unsaturated view of solar flare heating and plasma motions in the lower solar atmosphere!
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