Solar prominence

Solar Prominence with images of Jupiter and Earth for size comparison.

A prominence is a large, bright, gaseous feature extending outward from the Sun's surface, often in a loop shape. Prominences are anchored to the Sun's surface in the photosphere, and extend outwards into the Sun's corona. While the corona consists of extremely hot ionized gases, known as plasma, which do not emit much visible light, prominences contain much cooler plasma, similar in composition to that of the chromosphere. A prominence forms over timescales of about a day, and prominences may persist in the corona anywhere from one hour to nearly a year. Most last for several weeks or months. Some prominences break apart and give rise to coronal mass ejections. Scientists are currently researching how and why prominences are formed.

A typical prominence extends over many thousands of kilometers; the largest on record was estimated at over 800,000 kilometres (500,000 mi) long – roughly the radius of the Sun.

When a prominence is viewed from a different perspective so that it is against the sun instead of against space, it appears darker than the surrounding background. This formation is instead called a solar filament. It is possible for a projection to be both a filament and a prominence. Some prominences are so powerful that they throw out matter from the Sun into space at speeds ranging from 600 km/s to more than 1000 km/s. Other prominences form huge loops or arching columns of glowing gases over sunspots that can reach heights of hundreds of thousands of kilometres. Prominences may last for a few days or even for a few months. Flocculi (plural of flocculus) is another term for these filaments, and dark flocculi typically describes the appearance of solar prominences when viewed against the solar disk in certain wavelengths.

Videos

Solar prominence video clip.

An eclipse followed by an unusually large, dark prominence.

On September 23, 2012 the sun emitted a large blast of plasma in the form of a prominence.

On September 16, 2012 the sun had a beautiful prominence that slowly twisted and dissipated over several hours.

On the final day of 2012, the sun presented a beautiful twisting prominence that rose high into the corona for about 3 hours.

Images

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  Solar prominences.

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  Detached Solar prominence.

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  A limb's flare and after-flare prominence.

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  Major eruptive prominence (Skylab 1973).

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  Solar prominence STEREO behind.

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  Solar prominence STEREO ahead.

See also

• Coronal mass ejection
• Solar flare
• Corona

Further reading

• Galsgaard, K.; Longbottom, A.W. (1999). "Formation of solar prominences by flux convergence". Astrophysical Journal 510: 444. Bibcode:1999ApJ...510..444G. doi:10.1086/306559. 
• Low, B.C.; Fong, B.; Fan, Y. (2003). "The mass of a solar quiescent prominence". Astrophysical Journal 594 (2): 1060. Bibcode:2003ApJ...594.1060L. doi:10.1086/377042. 
• Golub, L.; Pasachoff J.M. (1997). The Solar Corona. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-48535-5.