In a sign that the red-hot sun may be attempting to "look cool," the latest images from NASAs SOHO observatory show what resemble smoke rings billowing from our parent star.
The unusual sight was captured by NASAs Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), an observatory orbiting with the Earth around the sun that can snap shots of our star as it spews billions of hot gas particles into space at speeds of a million miles per hour.
Such an outburst of hot glowing gas trapped inside curved magnetic fields, a process called a solar coronal mass ejection, normally occurs between two and four times a day.
But on January 31, scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, came up with a striking result: one string of photos over six hours depicted swirling loops of solar gas that looked like giant smoke rings floating from Grandpas cigar.
The rings are SOHOs latest snapshots, but the mission hasnt always been so lucky. The spacecraft had a problem with its orientation gyroscopes in 1998 and was almost lost. Now, 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth in a remote corner of the cosmos called the Lagrangian point, where the gravitational forces of the Earth and sun are in balance, SOHO is getting more action.
"We are seeing a lot more now than we did last year or the year before," said David Hathaway, solar physics group leader at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. This is because the suns magnetic field is in a particularly active point in its 11-year cycle of activity.
The swirling effect of the outbursts was only observed once, but the ejections continue several times a day.
The gases reach temperatures up to 2 million degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 million degrees Celsius) and zip through space at about a million miles an hour, Hathaway said. The solar ejections pour 10 billion tons of plasma out of the southwest corner of the sun, forming rings about 30 times the size of Earth.
In short, its powerful stuff.
And if pointed toward Earth, the gases could shake up our planets magnetic field, disrupting power stations and cell phones and destroying sensitive electronics on satellites in orbit.
One memorable solar storm in 1989 knocked out power to millions in Quebec and burned out a $10 million electrical transformer in New Jersey.
With electrical power on the ground, and more satellites in space, the outbursts from the sun will be increasingly hazardous, scientists believe.
"If they hit Earth, the consequences are very serious in the communications age," said S.T. Wu, a scholar at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a co-investigator for the SOHO mission.
Wu said scientists have placed different types of solar outbursts into categories and believe they know why they occur, but more research is needed to understand the "smoke ring" effect.
The next step, Wu said, is to send two satellites to take 3-D pictures of the sun. NASA has approved such a mission for 2003. "That will tell us how it happens," he said, "and where it happens."
advertisement
