NASA spots ‘typical’ solar prominence that dwarfs the Earth

In an incredible display of scale and power, the Sun produced an arch of super-heated material from its surface on Thursday morning that dwarfed the Earth by comparison.

This kind of eruption happens when the Sun's powerful magnetic field pokes out from its surface, drawing with it tons of 'solar plasma' — gases that are so hot that their electrons are stripped away and they become highly magnetized. They're called a 'prominence' if we see them against the blackness of space (like this one), but 'filament' is the word used when we see them against the bright backdrop of the Sun. Whichever name is used, they're common, and this particular one — even with its immense size — is a fairly typical one.

This eruption took place over roughly 4 hours on Thursday morning, and was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.

If these happen slowly, they tend to just hang in space, looking deceptively delicate and wispy, and then the plasma 'rains' back down onto the Sun once the magnetic field line collapses.

In other cases, they can explode out very suddenly and snap, launching immense 'coronal mass ejections' out into space. If these encounter Earth, the plasma just bounces off our magnetic field, but this can trigger geomagnetic storms that can last for days, causing intense auroras at the poles, but also disrupting satellite communications and even causing problems with power grids on the surface.

(Images and video courtesy: NASA)

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