A Twisted Solar Eruptive Prominence (APOD 01 Jun 2008)

[astrolabe]

Hello All,

I don't know about any of you but although I'm not particularly blown around by much in the world I found this particular APOD rather terrifying. I saw what I thought was the true nature of the Sun and it's power and how amazingly uncanny that life exists even in spite of it's fragility.

In this view the Sun looks anything but stable and the hot band around the Equator looks ready to separate the N&S hemispheres. I have developed a new regard for magnetic fields and gravity, not too mention an increase in my wonder of things at the level of Quantum Mechanics. Especially in bodies as large as our Sun and it's processes.

[orin stepanek]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080601.html

It does look a little intimidating at that! When the sun ejects material like that; it makes me wonder just what happens to the ejecta. I'm sure much of it falls back toward the sun; but surely some of it goes off into orbit. After cooling down; does it become just radiation or maybe some solid material becomes the building blocks of meteors, asteroids, comets, etc.?
Orin

[BMAONE23]

interesting though, how the apparent convergent banding in the image resembles the banding of Venusian clouds http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/image/planet ... 790226.jpg

[Qev]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080601.html

It does look a little intimidating at that! When the sun ejects material like that; it makes me wonder just what happens to the ejecta. I'm sure much of it falls back toward the sun; but surely some of it goes off into orbit. After cooling down; does it become just radiation or maybe some solid material becomes the building blocks of meteors, asteroids, comets, etc.?
Orin

Well, whatever doesn't fall back to the Sun will tend to get blown outwards by radiation pressure, effectively becoming part of the solar wind, I'd assume.

[Cherie]

I found this particular APOD rather terrifying..

Yikes! Me, too. How many thousands (?) of miles did this prominence protrude out from the sun? Or, put another way, what percentage of, say, the distance to Mercury's orbit did it protrude?

Are there even larger prominences on record?

Cherie

[Qev]

I found this particular APOD rather terrifying..

Yikes! Me, too. How many thousands (?) of miles did this prominence protrude out from the sun? Or, put another way, what percentage of, say, the distance to Mercury's orbit did it protrude?

Are there even larger prominences on record?

Cherie

Just doing a rough measurement using the APoD image puts it at about half a million kilometers tall, which I think is a pretty big prominence. That's slightly less than 1% of Mercury's average orbital distance, though.

[Tarree]

Are the light colored splotches or the orange colored ones hotter?

[astrolabe]

Hello Tarree,

The brighter areas are hotter than the darker, more orange areas. And welcome to the APOD Forum.