Sun unleashes jaw-dropping filament eruption — but Earth dodges the blast (photo)

[Admin]

GOES-19 satellite captures breathtaking footage as a towering solar filament erupts over the sun's eastern limb.

Sun unleashes jaw-dropping filament eruption — but Earth dodges the blast (photo) : Read more

 

[Classical Motion]

I wish they would show those videos in real time. Or at least intermittent time stamp frames for brevity.

It would give a more correct sense of the size, velocity and distance…….. of what we are watching. I believe it to be misleading about the size of the sun and the size of space. And the motion thru space. Those videos are warp speed.

I don’t believe matter can move that fast for that size area. Even though that phase of matter is the quickest.

And if that was real time, please correct me. I am not a scientist.

 

[Joexo]

What would have happened if it pointed towards our planet?

 

[billslugg]

It would take about 8 hours for such a plume to spurt out. You cannot see the motion of a prominence when you view it through an amateur telescope.
This was a whopper, all right. Had it been pointed at Earth the damage could have been historic. There are other factors also. It strongly depends upon the direction of the Earth's magnetic field as compared to the cloud's magnetic field at the time the cloud arrives at Earth. If it is opposite to Earth's it will facilitate the particle's journey down our own field lines, if oriented the same, it will bounce away.
It usually takes about two days to get here, however if another Coronal Mass Ejection, CME swept space clear a day or so earlier, the new one could get here in less than a day.

 

[Joexo]

Had it been pointed at Earth the damage could have been historic

For example what could have happened?

 

[COLGeek]

For example what could have happened?

Communications failures, satellite damage, impact to electrical grid, lots of the typical stuff associated with solar flare impacts, I would think. Possibly higher, more widespread, impacts than normal.

The Impact of Flares

 

[Classical Motion]

That ejected stripe is about 40-50 earth diameters long. That’s just a quick guess. If it hit us in an incident manor, we could be bombarded for weeks.

No space communications and maybe no grid. If it takes out our grid transformers, it could take years to repair.