A sweeping prominence, a huge cloud of relatively cool dense plasma is seen
suspended in the Sun's hot, thin corona. At times, promineces can erupt,
escaping the Sun's atmosphere. Emission in this spectral line shows the upper
chromosphere at a temperature of about 60,000 degrees K (over 100,000 degrees
F). Every feature in the image traces magnetic field structure. The hottest
areas appear almost white, while the darker red areas indicate cooler
temperatures. (Courtesy of SOHO/EIT consortium) 2Detailed closeup of magnetic
structures on the Sun's surface, seen in the H-alpha wavelength on August 22,
2003. (Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope (SST) operated by the Royal Swedish Academy
of Sciences, Oddbjorn Engvold, Jun Elin Wiik, Luc Rouppe van der Voort)
#3NASA's STEREO satellite captured the first images ever of a collision between
a solar "hurricane", called a coronal mass ejection (CME), and a comet on April
4, 2007. The collision caused the complete
detachment of the comet's plasma tail. Comets are icy leftovers from the solar
system's formation billions of years ago. They usually hang out in the cold,
distant regions of the solar system, but occasionally a gravitational tug from
a planet, another comet, or even a nearby star sends them into the inner solar
system. Once there, the sun's heat and radiation vaporizes gas and dust from
the comet, forming its tail. Comets typically have two tails, one made of dust
and a fainter one made of electrically conducting gas, called plasma.
(NASA/STEREO) # 4Image of an active solar region taken on July 24, 2002 near
the eastern limb of the Sun. The image highlights the three-dimensional nature
of the photosphere when seen at these large angles. The structures in the dark
sunspots in the upper central area of the image show distinct elevation above
the dark "floor" of the sunspot. The height of the structures has been
estimated by Dr. Bruce Lites of the High
Altitude Observatory to be between 200 and 450 km. The smallest resolvable
features in the image are about 70 km in size. There are also numerous bright
"faculae" visible on the edges of granules that face towards the observer.
(Prof. Goran Scharmer/Dr. Mats G. Löfdahl/Institute for Solar Physics of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences) # 5The total solar eclipse of February 16,
1980 was photographed from Palem, India, by a research team from the High
Altitude Observatory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The
photograph of the solar corona was taken with a camera system developed by
Gordon A. Newkirk, Jr. This specialized instrument photographs the corona in
red light, 6400 A -- through a radially graded filter that suppresses the
bright inner corona in order to show the much fainter streamers of the outer
corona in the same photograph. (Rhodes College, Memphis, Tennessee / High
Altitude Observatory (HAO), University Corporation for
Atmospheric Research (UCAR)) # 6The planet Venus is seen by NASA's TRACE
satellite, at the start of its transit across the sun on June 8, 2004.
(NASA/TRACE) # 7A view of a sunspot and granules on the Sun's surface, seen in
the H-alpha wavelength on August 4, 2003. (Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope (SST)
operated by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Göran Scharmer and Kai
Langhans, ISP) # 8Solar flares produce seismic waves in the Sun's interior that
closely resemble those created by earthquakes on our planet. On May 27, 1998,
researchers observed this flare-generated solar quake that contained about
40,000 times the energy released in the great earthquake that devastated San
Francisco in 1906, equivalent to an 11.3 magnitude earthquake, scientists
calculated. Over the course of an hour, the solar waves traveled for a distance
equal to 10 Earth diameters before fading into the fiery background of the
Sun's photosphere. Unlike water ripples that
travel outward at a constant velocity, the solar waves accelerated from an
initial speed of 22,000 miles per hour to a maximum of 250,000 miles per hour
before disappearing. (Courtesy of SOHO/EIT consortium. SOHO is a project of
international cooperation between ESA and NASA) #9An animation of the sun, seen
by NASA's Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) over the course of 6
days, starting June 27, 2005. (Courtesy of SOHO/EIT consortium) # 10Hinode
(formerly known as Solar-B) successfully captured a massive solar flare on 13
December 2006. It was one of the largest flares occurring in that period of
solar activity minimum. (JAXA/NASA/PPARC) # 11The image shows the corona for a
moderately active Sun, with some (red) hot active regions in both hemispheres,
surrounded by the (blue/green) cooler plasma of the quiet-Sun corona. Notice
also the north polar-crown filament, the trans-equatorial loops, and the
coronal hole in the south-east (lower-right)
corner of the image and the smaller one over the north pole. This image shows
the solar corona in a false-color, 3-layer composite: the blue, green, and red
channels show the 171Å, 195Å, and 284Å wavelengths, respectively (most
sensitive to emission from 1, 1.5, and 2 million degree gases). (TRACE Project,
Stanford-Lockheed Institute for Space Research, NASA) # 12A view of an
irregular-shaped sunspot and granules on the Sun's surface, seen on August 22,
2003. (Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope (SST) operated by the Royal Swedish Academy
of Sciences, Oddbjorn Engvold, Jun Elin Wiik, Luc Rouppe van der Voort, Oslo)
# 13On November 8, 2006, Mercury is seen, beginning a transit in front of the
Sun. (NASA/TRACE) # 14This TRACE 171Å-wavelength image from November 11, 2006
shows a sizeable active region at the east limb of the Sun (rotated clockwise
90 degrees so north is to the right) just as it rotates onto Earth-facing
hemisphere. Notice the low-lying dark
structures of filaments at the leading edge of the region, some "levitating"
dark material on the right-hand side of the region, and the small ephemeral
region towards the lower right. (NASA/TRACE) # 15The Sun, observed on May 22,
2008. With the Sun persisting in a near-minimal state of activity, only a few
small regions of some activity are seen on the disk. The cell-like appearance
is formed by the multitude of small clusters of magnetic flux that are
collected in the downflow regions of the supergranular network of convective
motions. (NASA/TRACE) # 16A display of thin loops is seen arching above active
regions of the Sun on January 1, 2001. (Courtesy Dick Shine, NASA/TRACE)
# 17This LASCO C2 image, taken 8 January 2002, shows a widely spreading coronal
mass ejection (CME) as it blasts more than a billion tons of matter out into
space at millions of kilometers per hour. The C2 image was turned 90 degrees so
that the blast seems to be pointing
down. An EIT 304 Angstrom image from a different day was enlarged and
superimposed on the C2 image so that it filled the occulting disk for effect
(Courtesy of SOHO/LASCO consortium) # 18Detailed closeup of magnetic structures
on the Sun's surface, seen in the H-alpha wavelength on August 22, 2003.
(Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope (SST) operated by the Royal Swedish Academy of
Sciences, Oddbjorn Engvold, Jun Elin Wiik, Luc Rouppe van der Voort, Oslo)
# 19NASA's STEREO (Ahead) spacecraft observed this visually stunning prominence
eruption on Sept. 29, 2008 in the 304 wavelength of extreme UV light. It rose
up and cascaded to the right over several hours, appearing something like a
flag unfurling, as it broke apart and headed into space. The material observed
is actually ionized Helium at about 60,000 degrees. Prominences are relatively
cool clouds of gas suspended above the Sun and controlled by magnetic forces.
(NASA/STEREO) # 20A transit of the Moon
across the face of the Sun on February 25, 2007 - but not seen from Earth.
This sight was visible only from the STEREO-B spacecraft in its orbit about the
sun, trailing behind the Earth. NASA's STEREO mission consists of two
spacecraft launched in October, 2006 to study solar storms. STEREO-B is
currently about 1 million miles from the Earth, 4.4 times farther away from the
Moon than we are on Earth. As the result, the Moon appears 4.4 times smaller
than what we are used to. (NASA/STEREO) # 21On September 30, 2001, TRACE
observed an M1.0 flare in an active region very near to the solar limb.
Fragments of a prominence hovered above the regions, with filamentary dark
(relatively cool) material moving along the field lines, which then spread to
form this dragon-like bright outline. (NASA/TRACE) #
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