See amazing new sun photos from the world's largest solar telescope

[Admin]

The world's largest solar telescope has captured the sun's fine features in remarkable detail, including rare glimpses of dying sunspots.

See amazing new sun photos from the world's largest solar telescope : Read more

 

[Helio]

Incredible quality!

 

[billslugg]

Amazing detail!

I never knew penumbral striations had hot cores and cool envelopes.

The picture showing granules also shows tiny, intense convection cells sometimes appearing in the cool, descending area bordering the granules. Tiny clouds of hot gas erupting from the cool valley between cells. Where is this energy coming from? Must be some sort of phase transition. But it is all plasma. No solid or liquid pases. Go figure.

 

[murgatroyd]

Where does the mass expelled from the Sun in a coronal mass ejection (CME) go? It must cool down and turn to dust. Does it clump? What happens if a space probe runs into it?

 

[Helio]

Where does the mass expelled from the Sun in a coronal mass ejection (CME) go? It must cool down and turn to dust. Does it clump? What happens if a space probe runs into it?

Some of it will fall back onto the Sun. This is charged plasma and it is the bursting of the magnetic fields that cause the eruptions, so this magnetic field will pull some of the material back, along with gravity.

But the ejection speeds are so high that billions of tons can far exceed the Sun's escape velocity. These ejections continue onward and eventually reach the heliopause, which is a boundary region where our solar system is plowing through the thin interstellar medium.

Any object that travels through this mass of high speed plasma will suffer. The Apollo astronauts were lucky to have avoided some narrow misses with flares and CME's in those days. The ISS has a special area with much greater protection for the occupants when these blasts hit them.

 

[castor]

Amazing detail!

I never knew penumbral striations had hot cores and cool envelopes.

The picture showing granules also shows tiny, intense convection cells sometimes appearing in the cool, descending area bordering the granules. Tiny clouds of hot gas erupting from the cool valley between cells. Where is this energy coming from? Must be some sort of phase transition. But it is all plasma. No solid or liquid pases. Go figure.

I agree! Amazing Details! Lucky you..... I never knew how to read penumbral striations
I look at this pictures and see a skinscar, a human lens. As far as I am informed I myself have plasma in my vanes. Time for namechange?

 

[billslugg]

One must be careful not to visualize the images as being 3 dimensional. The eye sees a deep well with a black bottom and many striations pouring down into it. This is not the case as this image is of things essentially in one plane.
We know that darker is cooler. We know that the dark area is a magnetic field coming straight at the camera. Also, charged particles do not cross magnetic field lines but must flow with them. Also, when charged particles flow in parallel they constrict or pinch into narrow flow lines. Try to keep all this in mind when interpreting the images. Truly amazing.

 

[castor]

Thank you. WE I could follow. The 'We' is an amazing new information.
I love to see those pictures. I never imagined they could be shared one day so easily!

 

[billslugg]

Thank you for the kind words. The science of charged plasma is very complex. Read what you can. Take it in small steps.