We know that the giant bright light in the sky that keeps us warm is so much more than we can see. A star, like countless others in the sky, close enough to outshine all of them. The Sun is a dynamic object, endlessly churning and burping plasma beyond it’s boundaries into the solar system and beyond. NASA spacecraft and ground-based telescopes have been keeping eyes on the Sun for years to characterize its 11-year magnetic cycle. And every so often they have a front-row seat to the massive blasts that just can’t be seen with human eyes. The first...
I’ve seen images from the Sun in all different wavelengths of light. It looks very different across the electromagnetic spectrum, with some wavelengths making up more of the Sun’s total energy output than others. What’s always striking to me is seeing the images of the Sun that show its structure, including the strange and beautiful features of plasma that dance across it’s surface. A recent APOD captures just such a concept. This image shows the Sun in Hydrogen Alpha, a wavelength of light at 656 nanometres. This is from the ionization of Hydrogen, where the electron is excited and transitions...
It sounds more wacky over-the-top science fiction, but this is real. A video from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows a huge spiralling solar prominence many times larger than the Earth. The Sun’s powerful magnetic fields drive such events, and even though I’m well aware crazy things like this happen on the Sun every day, I’m still blown away. Cheesy disaster B-movie? Let’s call it Solar Plasma Tornado.
The two major solar observatories, SDO and SOHO, both saw a massive solar event in exceptional clarity. Starting April 28th, a huge solar plasma loop broke away and was blasted millions of miles out into space from the surface of the Sun! This massive outburst of energy comes during the peak of the 11-year solar activity cycle, and shows us just how incredible and energetic our home star can be. Solar filaments like the one that broke away are long chains of solar plasma, a state of matter where super-heated gas becomes stripped of its electrons. The plasma filaments follow...
