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APOD: A Solar Filament Erupts (2018 Sep 16)

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 4:07 am
by APOD Robot
Image A Solar Filament Erupts

Explanation: What's happened to our Sun? Nothing very unusual -- it just threw a filament. Toward the middle of 2012, a long standing solar filament suddenly erupted into space producing an energetic Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). The filament had been held up for days by the Sun's ever changing magnetic field and the timing of the eruption was unexpected. Watched closely by the Sun-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory, the resulting explosion shot electrons and ions into the Solar System, some of which arrived at Earth three days later and impacted Earth's magnetosphere, causing visible aurorae. Loops of plasma surrounding an active region can be seen above the erupting filament in the featured ultraviolet image. Although the Sun is now in a relatively inactive state of its 11-year cycle, unexpected holes have opened in the Sun's corona allowing an excess of charged particles to stream into space. As before, these charged particles are creating auroras.

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Re: APOD: A Solar Filament Erupts (2018 Sep 16)

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 6:41 am
by Boomer12k
This is just beyond exceedingly awesome...

The Sun looks like a seething volcano that periodically erupts and ejects mass in ...well...massive amounts...

:---[===] *

Re: APOD: A Solar Filament Erupts (2018 Sep 16)

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 8:12 am
by DomeLord
"...the timing of the eruption was unexpected." How so? Do you have a timetable? What is your basis for predictions for both this and "...unexpected holes have opened in the Sun's corona,,,"?

Re: APOD: A Solar Filament Erupts (2018 Sep 16)

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 12:53 pm
by Guest
One of the links you cite goes to a scam website with popups that won’t let you leave the page.

Re: APOD: A Solar Filament Erupts (2018 Sep 16)

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 2:36 pm
by geckzilla
Guest wrote: Sun Sep 16, 2018 12:53 pm One of the links you cite goes to a scam website with popups that won’t let you leave the page.
Could you be specific? I just clicked all of them, and couldn't find anything like you describe.

Re: APOD: A Solar Filament Erupts (2018 Sep 16)

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 4:01 pm
by sunson
It would be nice to have an earth scale just to have a sense of dimensions!

Re: APOD: A Solar Filament Erupts (2018 Sep 16)

Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2018 5:00 pm
by bystander
sunson wrote: Sun Sep 16, 2018 4:01 pm It would be nice to have an earth scale just to have a sense of dimensions!
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a ... _scale.jpg