Solar Firestorm
This week, Snapshot is going from a fire on Earth to a fiery rain on the sun. NASA Goddard just released a video, screenshot above, taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory of the sun producing a complex eruption that ended with "coronal rain" last July. NASA explained:
Over the course of the next day, hot plasma in the corona cooled and condensed along strong magnetic fields in the region. Magnetic fields, themselves, are invisible, but the charged plasma is forced to move along the lines, showing up brightly in the extreme ultraviolet wavelength of 304 Angstroms, which highlights material at a temperature of about 50,000 Kelvin. This plasma acts as a tracer, helping scientists watch the dance of magnetic fields on the sun, outlining the fields as it slowly falls back to the solar surface. Click through to read more and watch the entire video.
Image: NASA
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Comments (1)
Too much , too little but sufficient for now.
Posted by Ruben R. Rodriguez on February 23,2013 | 12:10 PM