Credit & Copyright: Rainee Colacurcio
Explanation:
What's happening to the Sun?
Clearly, the Sun's lower half is hidden behind a thick cloud.
Averaging over the entire
Earth, clouds block the Sun
about 2/3rds of the time, although much less over many land locations.
On the Sun's upper right is a
prominence of magnetically levitating hot gas.
The prominence might seem small but it could easily
envelop our
Earth
and persist for over a month.
The featured image is a combination of two exposures,
one optimizing the cloud and prominence, and the other optimizing
the Sun's texture.
Both were taken about an hour apart with the same camera and from the same location
in
Lynnwood,
Washington,
USA.
The shaggy texture derives from the Sun's
chromosphere,
an atmospheric layer that stands out in the specifically
exposed color.
The uniformity of the texture shows the surface to be
relatively calm, indicative of a Sun just past the solar
minimum in its
11-year cycle.
In the years
ahead, the Sun will progress toward a
more active epoch where
sunspots, prominences, and ultimately
auroras on Earth will be more common: solar maximum.
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NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
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Publikacii s klyuchevymi slovami:
Sun - prominence - Solnce - Protuberanec
Publikacii so slovami: Sun - prominence - Solnce - Protuberanec | |
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