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You don't want to see the sun when it's angry. Or do you? Over the past few days the Internet has been buzzing about a monster mega-filament of magnetized material, stretching more than 300,000 miles (500,000 kilometers) across the sun's solar hemisphere. In this color-coded, extreme ultraviolet image from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, you can see the filament arcing around sunspot 1112 at lower right. To give you a sense of scale, that width is longer than the distance between Earth and the moon. If the filament unleashed a flare in just the wrong direction, it could have caused trouble for electric grids and communication links on Earth.
Fortunately, when the eruption finally came on Monday, it sent a solar flare off into deep space and away from Earth. You can watch the blast on the SpaceWeather.com website. This won't be the last outburst: Astronomers expect solar activity to continue rising toward "Solar Max" in 2012 or 2013.
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That is one of the most beautiful, incredible pictures I've ever seen. Been following the sun and sunspots for a few years, ever since there was that dramatic drop in them when the sun was going for days without any sunspots developing. Wonder what was up?
Starlite56: That was the solar minimum that (may) still be finishing up. It was the deepest minimum in about a century. But, I've been chugging numbers on sunspots as well and a moving average, (40, 50, and 60 years) all show a longer trend of a lower level of activity from 200 to 50 years ago, with a peak over the past 50 years (coinciding with the space age). If the trend holds up, we will head back to the "norm" of fewer sunspots over the next cycle. The real problem with studying the Sun is that it is on a multi-billion year timescale and we've only been seriously studying it for a few hundred years (at least with some scientific method and instruments).
That is a lot of energy. I consider saturn the second best particle accelerator in the solar system, this extreme Ultra Violet photo is showing us the NUMBER ONE best particle accelerator in the solar system..future generations will look back at us and wonder why we didn't use this tool earlier to delve into the inner workings of space...lots to be learned in just that one snapshot....in the meantime, time to quite playing statistical roulette and get some planning together for when earth is directly between deep space and the sun when one of those filaments lets loose.
Solar Max in 2012 or 2013???
Maybe December 21st. 2012
oh no, please don't start that crap.... Guess what is going to happen on 12/21/12? NOTHING! Just like Y2K. everyone said the world was going to end, and what happened? NOTHING!
No one said the world was going to end on Y2K, and the reason nothing happened is because while everybody was mocking the guy who first brought up the issue, they were also reprogramming their computers. If I'm not mistaken, that guy is now dead, and he died without the vindication that should have been his.
An incredible amout of money was spent on that and all for nothing it appears.
There wasn't one recorded event of something going awry due to Y2K.
That photo is both fascinating and frightening. I'm glad we dodged that bullet. I can't believe that something that ominous looking would only disrupted satellites and the power grid if it had blown in our direction.
One more thing that my tiny monkey brain is just not able to comprehend.
That's a really cool picture. :)
The sun has a non-solar hemisphere? Which one is that?
I'm guessing that was supposed to be southern hemisphere...?
Could the sun produce a flare or mass ejection so powerful that it could kill us much
like in the movie "Knowing" with Nick Cage? Has the sun ever produced such a thing
to cause mass extinction?
The Sun has probably been having flares since its beginning, they've certainly been going on since we've been able to detect them. Every so often, one intersects Earth, and the only notable thing that happens is very vivid Auroras, disruption of some radio communications, and sometimes problems with the power grid. Sorry, not a cause of extinction.
That's what I mean...it was just a rhetorical thought...but who really knows?
Sean F....are you seeing more than a aolar hemisphere when you look at that photo? Or less?
Sean F.....
When you look at that photo of the sun and it's big flare...are you seeing more or less of a solar hemisphere?
absolutely breathtaking, so tell me, what better description can you imagine as god, there , take a good look at the power, it controls and desides if we will see tommorrow or not, what the weather is likes creates everything, and can destroy. nukes look like a walk in the park compared to this wrath. great picture, soon it will be more brighter than before, this is what we need to work on better sunscreen, live for now, mother nature is pissed.
Yes at any time death could strike the Earth just like disease can strike you. We all in this time are quite trusting even though there are millions of people who actually wanna wipe humanity off the face of the Earth almost totally. They are in government and all around you and they hide behind smiles and wit. What is interesting to me is the faith humans have on this planet of our protection and yet really have no faith in God and no interest in learning or thinking or solving the Worlds problems. It seems as long as most people virally destroy their environment to propetiate their greed and prosperity they really have no heart at all for others.