Space
Video of Plasma Rain on Sun Captured by NASA
Benita Matilda
First Posted: Feb 22, 2013 08:14 AM EST
A medium-strength solar flare exploded on the Sun's lower right hand side expelling light and radiation July 19, 2012. This beautiful dazzling magnetic display was trapped on film by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and released recently.
Karen Fox, from Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center, stated on NASA's website that eruptive events on the sun can be very unusual. She continues to say, at times these eruptions come with a solar flare and some additional ejection of solar material referred to as coronal mass ejection. At times they come with complex moving structures with regard to the changes that occur in the magnetic field lines that circle the sun's atmosphere.
The blast was an example of coronal rain which generates shimmering plasma loops. This eruption had the three major phenomena i.e., solar flare, a coronal mass ejection and coronal rain.
According to NASA officials, the hot plasma in the corona cooled and compressed tightly along the strong magnetic fields in the region. Though the magnetic fields are invisible, the charged plasma moved along the magnetic fields. They showed up brightly in the UV wavelength of 304 Angstroms, thereby outlining the fields as it falls back to the solar surface.
Prior to this, SDA had captured a massive black spot on the sun known as a sunspot that is formed in less than 48 hours and is larger than six Earths across, Fox said in a statement.
"The spot quickly evolved into what's called a delta region, in which the lighter areas around the sunspot, the penumbra, exhibit magnetic fields that point in the opposite direction of those fields in the center, dark area. This is a fairly unstable configuration that scientists know can lead to eruptions of radiation on the sun called solar flares," Fox wrote on the NASA website.
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First Posted: Feb 22, 2013 08:14 AM EST
A medium-strength solar flare exploded on the Sun's lower right hand side expelling light and radiation July 19, 2012. This beautiful dazzling magnetic display was trapped on film by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and released recently.
Karen Fox, from Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center, stated on NASA's website that eruptive events on the sun can be very unusual. She continues to say, at times these eruptions come with a solar flare and some additional ejection of solar material referred to as coronal mass ejection. At times they come with complex moving structures with regard to the changes that occur in the magnetic field lines that circle the sun's atmosphere.
The blast was an example of coronal rain which generates shimmering plasma loops. This eruption had the three major phenomena i.e., solar flare, a coronal mass ejection and coronal rain.
According to NASA officials, the hot plasma in the corona cooled and compressed tightly along the strong magnetic fields in the region. Though the magnetic fields are invisible, the charged plasma moved along the magnetic fields. They showed up brightly in the UV wavelength of 304 Angstroms, thereby outlining the fields as it falls back to the solar surface.
Prior to this, SDA had captured a massive black spot on the sun known as a sunspot that is formed in less than 48 hours and is larger than six Earths across, Fox said in a statement.
"The spot quickly evolved into what's called a delta region, in which the lighter areas around the sunspot, the penumbra, exhibit magnetic fields that point in the opposite direction of those fields in the center, dark area. This is a fairly unstable configuration that scientists know can lead to eruptions of radiation on the sun called solar flares," Fox wrote on the NASA website.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone