unknownskywalker: Looping Hot The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) caught this dramatic image of sunspot 1302 on September 28, 2011 with the Advanced Imaging Assembly (AIA). This sunspot has produced an x-class flare, two m-class flares and several CMEs since September 24. AIA takes images in 10 different light wavelengths. This one is shown in 171 Angstroms, typically colorized in yellow on SDO images. The thin, whispy lines are called coronal loops and they are made of hot solar material – charged particles called plasma – that collect around invisible magnetic fields looping up from the sun. The 171Angstrom wavelength is one of the best for looking at these coronal loops.
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lookatthesefuckinstars: A Large Active Region Crosses the Sun
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northernbriton: A sunspot the size of the Earth creates a tsunami across the surface of our Sun.
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unknownskywalker: Solar Prominence Up Close In Falmouth, Maine, photographer John Stetson turned his solar telescope on August 17th toward sunspot group 1271 and found it seething. “The active region is bright and crackling, surrounded by long, twisting filaments of magnetism that seem poised to produce some powerful flares,” he says. Indeed, NOAA analysts note that the sunspot has a “beta-delta-gamma” magnetic field that harbors energy for X-class explosions.
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aimlessinspace: NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (Little SDO) This composite image was taken only minutes after the M-class solar flare. The very visible feature is, what I call, a Sun Snake. This is a filament. Filaments are elongated clouds of cooler gases suspended above the Sun by magnetic forces. They are rather unstable and often break away from the Sun.On December 6, 2010 a similar filament erupted. Look at this beautiful video of that event:  http://youtu.be/P9Raip0Bd3cCredit: NASA SDO If you follow the link, it has other images from today’s flare!
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bonedust: Eclipse Shadow Cone
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On June 7, the Sun unleashed only a medium sized solar flare as rotation carried active regions of sunpots toward the solar limb. But that flare was followed by an astounding gush of magnetized plasma seen erupting at the Sun’s edge in this extreme ultraviolet image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory. Spectacular movies of the event follow the darker, cooler plasma over a period of hours as it rains down across a broad area of the Sun’s surface, arcing along otherwise invisible magnetic field lines. An associated coronal mass ejection, a massive cloud of high energy particles, was blasted in the general direction of the Earth and may have already triggered auroral activity after a glancing blow to Earth’s magnetosphere.
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Enceladus Looms Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, ISS, JPL, ESA, NASA Explanation: A sunlit crescent of Saturn’s moon Enceladus looms above the night side of Saturn in this dramatic image from the Cassini spacecraft. Captured on August 13, 2010 looking in a sunward direction during a flyby of the icy moon, the view also traces layers in the upper atmosphere of Saturn scattering sunlight along the planet’s bright limb. Closer to the spacecraft than Saturn, Enceladus is a mere 60,000 kilometers from Cassini’s camera. The south polar region of the 500 kilometer-diameter moon is illuminated, including plumes of water vapor and icy particles spraying above the long fissures in the moon’s surface. The fissures have been dubbed tiger stripes. First discovered in Cassini images from 2005, the plumes are strong evidence that liquid water exists near the surface of surprisingly active Enceladus.
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