Comment on šæššæ
ApathyTree@lemmy.dbzer0.com āØ10ā© āØmonthsā© agoThey arenāt uncommon persey, itās just another form of solar prominance, or material lifted above the surface by magnetic field liness. However, the tornado-like appearance rather than a full arc of material that connects to the surface in 2 places is rather uncommon, and itās even possible that itās an artifact of the way the sun is photographed (the lenses filter based on temperature, essentially, and material further from the surface may cool to the point it doesnāt get picked up with any of the filters, making it effectively invisible), or the angle at which the photos are taken in relation to the prominence (if we are looking at it head on, we wouldnāt see the second anchor point).
How they form is an ongoing mystery with many models, like all solar prominences, and it probably isnāt disconnected on one end like a cyclone would be, but visually it resembles a tornado, and the material does rotate around the magnetic field lines, much the same way a tornado rotates in air. We see the same rotation in more typical coronal loops, which are what cause coronal mass ejections when one end or the other releases. They are absolutely massive when they do form, 10+ stacked earths in size, and can last days, weeks, months.
Itās one of my go-to water-testing facts because almost everyone likes the sun, is at least vaguely familiar with tornadoes, and can envision a ā10 earth tall tornado of plasma on the sunā. Which is a damned cool image to envision - the reality is also spectacular but a bit less so.
The one linked below is actually from March this year, which is neat! I didnāt even know it happened again! This one was 14 earths high and exploded at the end of its cycle! How cool! I hope they got some really good data on how it works! Iāll have to do some looking :)
Hadriscus@lemm.ee āØ10ā© āØmonthsā© ago
Mesmerizingā¦ the pictures in the article are breathtaking too. I remember looking at a real time feed of the sun as shot by a specialized telescope in southern France,-which was always pointed at the sun during the day- and learning that it rotates faster around the equator than it does near the poles. Before then, my mental picture of the sun was that of a naively solid object, like a rocky planet.
Observation biases like you mention are fascinating. Because in astronomy we can never move around to see things from an angle, or remove an obstacle from our field of view, we have to get exceedingly clever. I assume if the sun ejects matter in our direction, and then this matters gets cold, thereās no way to observe it? -isnāt it going to get overblown by the sheer power of the sun surface behind it?