New telescope images released by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) show that there is a 533,000 miles “crack” across its surface of the Sun. The photo taken last week shows a “filament” of cooler material hovering over the surface of the Sun. This is one of the longest ever recorded.
According to scientists, filaments can float for days before disappearing and sometimes they erupt out into space, releasing solar material in a shower that either rains back down or escapes into space, becoming a moving cloud known as a coronal mass ejection. These ejections are bursts of solar wind and magnetic fields that can be felt even on Earth.
Even though it looks like a crack in the images, it is actually only gas that would appear as a raised prominence if viewed from the side.
“SDO shows colder material as dark and hotter material as light, so the line is, in fact, an enormous swatch of colder material hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona. Stretched out, that line – or solar filament as scientists call it – would be more than 533,000 miles long. That is longer than 67 Earths lined up in a row”, NASA explains.
“SDO captured images of the filament in numerous wavelengths, each of which helps highlight material of different temperatures on the sun. By looking at such features in different wavelengths and temperatures, scientists learn more about what causes these structures, as well as what catalyzes their occasional eruptions”, NASA also noted.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory was launched February 2010 from Cape Canaveral and is designed to study the causes of solar variability and its impacts on Earth. The spacecraft’s long-term measurements give solar scientists in-depth information to help characterize the interior of the sun, the sun’s magnetic field, the hot plasma of the solar corona, and the density of radiation that creates the ionosphere of the planets. Scientists use the data to create better forecasts of space weather needed to protect aircraft, satellites and astronauts living and working in space.