Watch This: Solar Prominence Achieves Liftoff

And we have liftoff! The Solar Dynamics Observatory has been providing images and video of some beautiful prominences and filaments over the past few days, and today the spacecraft captured a large prominence lifting off over the North Western limb of the Sun. A huge ball of plasma explodes from the surface and blooms into an arc loop that achieves enough energy to escape the Sun’s gravity.

The SDO team explains what the video shows:

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Read the rest of Watch This: Solar Prominence Achieves Liftoff (136 words)

© nancy for Universe Today, 2012. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), sun

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