Starship Asterisk*

BMAONE23 wrote:As a Guess,
These solar prominences form on, follow and flow along magnetic lines. Some inherent property within them is evidently ruled by magnetism. I would think that as the force of the eruption lessens, the force of gravity gets stronger than the repulsive force behind the prominence and the material is pulled back to the surface, but because they are directed along the magnetic paths they follow, they backtrack along the magnetic field line instead of just falling straight down.

APOD_admirer wrote:In the last few seconds of the video, the some of the ejecta appears to flow in reverse, back towards where it came from. I found this fascinating.

Does anyone know why the flow moves in that way ? I'd be most grateful for any info.

NoelC wrote:Ah, oversimplifying the term "UV" was my mistake then. Thanks for that.

-Noel

NoelC wrote:Well, I'm seeing plainly, in this video reportedly shot in UV light, that the VERY large prominence is equally bright as the sun. You say it's tenuous gas, Chris, but that doesn't change the observation that it's brilliant. Some parts of it are even a lot brighter than the photosphere overall.

Just as a guess, though we can't see it all I'd say the size of this flare is at least 10% of the apparent size of the solar disk at some points. If Neufer's figures are an overall average measurement, then in an instantaneous fashion - i.e., over the 90 minute period of this particular huge flare - it seems to me one could expect to get a sunburn noticeably faster.

I don't see numbers of this size as negligible. Did I make a mistake somewhere here?

neufer wrote:When the Sun is at its greatest level of activity (solar maximum) it outputs about 10% more ULTRAVIOLET energy than it does when it is at its lowest level of activity (solar minimum). This causes the Earth's Stratopause to be about 10K warmer than normal which, in turn, makes the Stratosphere somewhat less stable dynamically.

orin stepanek wrote:
The videos were awesome! It's hard to imagine that the sun will burn for 5 billion more years as much material as it is expelling.

Chris Peterson wrote:

row wrote:
does an increase in solar activity translate into a greater amount of solar energy hitting earth?

When the Sun is at its greatest level of activity (solar maximum) it outputs about 0.1% more total energy than it does when it is at its lowest level of activity (solar minimum). This difference is related to the overall behavior of the Sun, and not individual events like this eruption. Any transient change in energy output during this eruption was too small to be detected. As impressive as events like this appear, they represent an insignificant amount of energy compared with the total energy output of the Sun.

NoelC wrote:I always get my gas and plasma mixed up... Do they behave the same at this scale?

That thing is HUGE! Given that it was a significant size as compared to the size of the solar disk, and just about as bright, would we have felt the sunlight being particularly bright/hot during that eruption, if we had been outside under a clear sky? Would we have gotten a sunburn significantly faster in that hour and a half period?

row wrote:does an increase in solar activity translate into a greater amount of solar energy hitting earth?

we all know that the earth is a tiny insignificant little marble.

APOD Robot wrote: A Solar Prominence Eruption from SDO

The scale of the prominence is huge -- the entire Earth would easily fit under the flowing curtain of hot gas.