| These images
are from SOHO
Pick of the Week (July 1, 2002) at the NASA website.
You may click either for a larger version. |
| “A huge,
curling solar prominence in extreme ultraviolet light (ionized helium at
304Å) was seen erupting from the Sun on 1 July 2002. Prominences are
huge clouds of relatively cool, dense plasma suspended in the Sun’s
hot, tenuous corona. Magnetic fields built up enormous forces that propelled
particles out beyond the Sun’s surface. Emission in this spectral line
shows the upper chromosphere at a temperature of about 60,000 degrees K.
For a sense of scale, the prominence seems to extend at least 30 Earths.
There is a second prominence in the upper right as well. ” |
| “The second
image shows how this event evolved as a coronal mass ejection (CME) cloud
just minutes later as it moved in an hour and a half through the field of
view of LASCO C2. A CME blasts billions of tons of matter at millions of
miles (kilometers) per hour into space. This one dos not appear to be Earth-directed.
” |
