Images
of a gigantic filament eruption on the sun were captured on Sept.
29-30, 2013, by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO. Image Credit:NASA/SDO. › View Promo Image
A
magnetic filament of solar material erupted on the sun in late
September, breaking the quiet conditions in a spectacular fashion. The
200,000 mile long filament ripped through the sun's atmosphere, the
corona, leaving behind what looks like a canyon of fire. The glowing
canyon traces the channel where magnetic fields held the filament aloft
before the explosion. Visualizers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
in Greenbelt, Md. combined two days of satellite data to create a short
movie of this gigantic event on the sun.
In reality, the sun is not made of fire, but of something called
plasma: particles so hot that their electrons have boiled off, creating a
charged gas that is interwoven with magnetic fields.
These images were captured on Sept. 29-30, 2013, by NASA's Solar
Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, which constantly observes the sun in a
variety of wavelengths.
Different wavelengths help capture different aspect of events in the
corona. The red images shown in the movie help highlight plasma at
temperatures of 90,000° F and are good for observing filaments as they form and erupt. The yellow images, showing temperatures at 1,000,000°
F, are useful for observing material coursing along the sun's magnetic
field lines, seen in the movie as an arcade of loops across the area of
the eruption. The browner images at the beginning of the movie show
material at temperatures of 1,800,000° F, and it is
here where the canyon of fire imagery is most obvious. By comparing
this with the other colors, one sees that the two swirling ribbons
moving farther away from each other are, in fact, the footprints of the
giant magnetic field loops, which are growing and expanding as the
filament pulls them upward.
The movie runs 2.3 minutes and is available for download in high resolution at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?11379
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