December 6, 2010 6:46 pm
Check out this dramatic and slightly alarming picture of a huge filament emanating from the surface of the Sun, courtesy of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. The filament is about 700,000km long, apparently – that’s an entire Solar Radius. It’s expected to collapse back into the Sun at some point, an event which should be rather exciting! For more details see here.
Even better, here’s a close-up animation.
It reminds me a bit of that Balrog thing in The Lord of the Rings that gave Gandalf such a good run for his money.
Posted by telescoper
Categories: The Universe and Stuff
Tags: filament, NASA, Solar Dynamics Observatory, Sun
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Is this anything to do with why it’s so cold?
By Anton Garrett on December 7, 2010 at 8:54 pm
I doubt it. The Sun has been in a state of very low activity in recent times but is now starting to get active again…
..the filament isn’t heading for us, by the way!
By telescoper on December 7, 2010 at 9:08 pm