The Not So Quiet Sun
August 7th, 2010
After a
long solar minimum, the Sun is
no longer
so quiet.
On August 1, this
extreme ultraviolet
snapshot of the Sun
from the Solar Dynanimcs Observatory captured a
complex burst
of activity playing across the Sun's northern hemisphere.
The false-color image shows the hot
solar plasma
at temperatures ranging from 1 to 2 million
kelvins.
Along with the erupting filaments and prominences,
a small(!) solar flare spawned in the active region
at the left was accompanied by a coronal mass ejection
(CME),
a billion-ton cloud of energetic particles headed for planet Earth.
Making the
93 million mile trip in only two days,
the CME impacted Earth's
magnetosphere,
triggering a
geomagnetic storm
and both
northern and
southern auroral displays.
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