Explanation: It's one of the baddest sunspot regions in years. Active Region 1429 may not only look, to some, like an angrybird -- it has thrown off some of the most powerful flares and coronal mass ejections of the current solar cycle. The extended plumes from these explosions have even rained particles on the Earth's magnetosphere that have resulted in colorful auroras. Pictured above, AR 1429 was captured in great detail in the Sun's chromosphere three days ago by isolating a color of light emitted primarily by hydrogen. The resulting image is shown in inverted false color with dark regions being the brightest and hottest. Giant magnetically-channeled tubes of hot gas, some longer than the Earth, are known as spicules and can be seen carpeting the chromosphere. The light tendril just above AR 1429 is a cool filament hovering just over the active sunspot region. As solar maximum nears in the next few years, the increasingly wound and twisted magnetic field of the Sun may create even more furious active regions that chirp even more energetic puffs of solar plasma into our Solar System.
SDO AIA 211 image showing a large triangular hole in the Sun's corona
SDO AIA 193 image of the March 13 coronal hole
Images courtesy NASA, SDO and the AIA science team.
Huge Coronal Hole Is Sending Solar Wind Our Way
by Jason Major on March 13, 2012
<<An enormous triangular hole in the Sun’s corona was captured earlier today by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, seen above from the AIA 211 imaging assembly. This gap in the Sun’s atmosphere is allowing more charged solar particles to stream out into the Solar System… and toward Earth as well.
Normally, loops of magnetic energy keep much of the Sun’s outward flow of gas contained. Coronal holes are regions — sometimes very large regions, such as the one witnessed today — where the magnetic fields don’t loop back onto the Sun but instead stream outwards, creating channels for solar material to escape.
The material constantly flowing outward is called the solar wind, which typically “blows” at around 250 miles (400 km) per second. When a coronal hole is present, though, the wind speed can double to nearly 500 miles (800 km) per second.
Increased geomagnetic activity and even geomagnetic storms may occur once the gustier solar wind reaches Earth, possibly within two to three days. The holes appear dark in SDO images because they are cooler than the rest of the corona, which is extremely hot — around 1,000,000 C!>>
not an angry bird, more like 3 teardrop lobes at 120 deg from each other, with a clearly visible dark (hot) heart at the center; secondary shape to the right could be a cliff overhang or sphinx rotated 90 deg ; and the triangle in the above comment is actually 2 triangles obviously
APOD Robot wrote:
Explanation: It's one of the baddest sunspot regions in years...As solar maximum nears in the next few years, the increasingly wound and twisted magnetic field of the Sun may create even more furious active regions that chirp even more energetic puffs of solar plasma into our Solar System.
Solar eruption mistaken for refueling UFO spaceship
Written By Natalie Wolchover
TechMediaNetwork, March 14, 2012
<<Telescope images captured of the sun on Monday, March 12, show what appears to be a planet-size shadowy object tethered to the sun by a dark filament. In the image sequence, a burst of brightly lit material can be seen erupting from the sun's surface surrounding the dark object, after which the orb detaches from the sun and shoots out into space.
The footage, a composite of images captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory and processed by scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, has quickly garnered attention on YouTube, where viewers are suggesting it shows a UFO spacecraft refueling by sucking up solar plasma, or at the very least, the birth of a new planet.
However, according to NASA scientists, the feature is actually a little-understood, but frequently observed, type of solar activity called a "prominence," and the way it is situated beneath another solar feature gives it its otherworldy appearance. The thread extending from the lower left edge of the sun in the video is known as a "prominence," a feature containing cooler, denser plasma than the surrounding 3.5-million-degree Fahrenheit corona, said Joseph Gurman, project scientist in the Solar Physics Laboratory at NASA Goddard. It isn't yet known exactly how prominences develop, but these dense plasma loops can extend from the sun's surface thousands of miles into space.
"When prominences are that extended in height above the limb [edge of the sun], it's usually a sign that they're about to erupt, as this one did," Gurman told Life's Little Mysteries. C. Alex Young, a solar astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center who runs a website called The Sun Today, explained that the prominence is situated below a tunnel-shape feature called a filament channel. "When you look at it from the edge of the sun, what you actually see is a spherical object. You're actually looking down the tunnel. And this tunnel sits up top of the filament," Young explained at The Sun Today. He added that the development of these structures is quite common. Gurman explained that all the light in the SDO images is the same color — a specific wavelength that is emitted by iron atoms that have been ionized 13 times, known as Fe XIV. The dark filament seen in the images (the refueling UFO's "tether," according to YouTube users) is a part of the prominence that happens to absorb light of this color, making it appear dark. "The absorption is typically seen in lines such as Fe XIV only in the thinnest, densest parts of the prominence, which is here seen edge-on as it rotates over the solar limb," he said.>>
This is an awesome photo. I've enjoyed looking at AR1429 through a small telescope with a simple solar filter. It's really big, and even at low magnifcation (30x) there are many discernible details.
The ARP 1429 solar region has expelled powerful flares and coronal mass ejections very important.
The Sun loses mass and energy in each event of solar activity.
Last edited by bystander on Fri Mar 16, 2012 6:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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ta152h0 wrote:Think this is angry, travel about 8000 ly and check out Eta Carinae. Or WR104. There are a few bad boys out there
That's absolutely true. But our Sun is more interesting than we realize. It is more powerful than most stars in our galaxy, because it is bigger, brighter and more massive than most. At the same time it is "less angry" than most other main sequence stars of spectral class G. That is why Kepler is having more trouble than expected detecting planetary transits of G-type stars. Most other G-type stars are more variable, and therefore "angrier", than our own.
The more we learn about other stars and planets, the less typical the Sun and the solar system appears to be.
Know the quiet place within your heart and touch the rainbow of possibility; be
alive to the gentle breeze of communication, and please stop being such a jerk. — Garrison Keillor
Angry Sun Erupting
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