10/18/2010 It Came From The Sun
This image shows a powerful solar prominence. A prominence is a general term for a projection from the Sun, usually in the shape of a loop. The largest one recorded was 28 times the diameter of the Earth, and had a mass on the order of 10^11 tonnes! That's a lot of sandbags. I can't believe an object that seems so wispy contains so much matter. Prominences are held to the Sun by its magnetic field, and can be quiescent (long) or eruptive (short). I never knew about the solar cycle, a period of about 11 years between spurts of increased solar activity.
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