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Sun Shows Temper Even in Mild Times
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 12:47 pm ET
01 July 2002
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While the Sun is officially past the peak of its 11-year cycle of activity, a spacecraft recorded today a beautiful loop of magnetic energy lifting off the hot ball of gas While the Sun is officially past the peak of its 11-year cycle of activity, a spacecraft recorded today a beautiful loop of magnetic energy lifting off the hot ball of gas. An image captured by the SOHO spacecraft, which sits partway between Earth and the Sun, shows a huge "eruptive prominence" escaping the Sun in the lower left. "Prominences are loops of magnetic fields with hot gas trapped inside," said Paal Brekke, SOHO Deputy Project Scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "Sometimes, as the fields become unstable, they will erupt and rise off of the Sun in just a few minutes or hours. If eruptions like these are directed toward the Earth, they can cause a significant amount of aurora and other geomagnetic activity." This eruption is not headed toward our planet, Brekke told SPACE.com. The material in the eruptive prominence is heated to more than 107,000 degrees Fahrenheit (60,000 Kelvin), much cooler than the Sun's surrounding atmosphere, or corona, which is typically at temperatures above 1 million degrees. The bright area near the prominence is a so-called "active region" of the Sun. Another prominence is seen lifting off the upper-right of the Sun. "This one has been there for days," Brekke said. "They look cool and the plasma [superheated gas] is sustained up there in the corona by magnetic field lines." The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA. The new image was taken with SOHO's Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) instrument. SPACE.com Sun Cams: See the Sun Now, Animated!
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