A "Colossal" Solar Prominence: The View from Argentina

A "Colossal" Solar Prominence: The View from Argentina

Astronomer & astrophotographer Eduardo Schaberger Poupeau: "On the morning of Tuesday, October 29, at 12:44 UTC, the sun put on a spectacular show. Through my Coronado Solarmax III 90mm Double Stack solar telescope, I captured a colossal prominence on the southwestern limb, stretching over 500,000 km. This impressive yet faint structure posed a challenge to capture in detail, set against a dynamic backdrop of filaments and active regions where sunspots stand out. This image is a clear reflection that we are currently experiencing the peak activity of this solar cycle."

Argentine astronomer Eduardo Schaberger Poupeau is a longtime observer of the sun, and he is not easily impressed. "Yesterday," he says, "I was impressed. On the morning of Tuesday, Oct. 29th, the sun put on a spectacular show. Through my Coronado solar telescope, I captured this colossal prominence."

"It stretched more than 500,000 km above the sun's southwestern limb (greater than the distance between Earth and the Moon)," he says. "This image is a clear reflection that we are currently experiencing Solar Maximum."

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) saw initial the stages of this explosion that quickly became too large for the spacecraft's cameras to capture fully. The debris could hit Earth on Nov. 1st, arriving in the form of a 'glancing-blow' coronal mass ejection (CME). 

A solar prominence (also known as a filament when viewed against the solar disk) is a large, bright feature extending outward from the Sun’s surface. Prominences are anchored to the Sun’s surface in the photosphere, and extend outwards into the Sun’s hot outer atmosphere, called the corona. A prominence forms over timescales of about a day, and stable prominences may persist in the corona for several months, looping hundreds of thousands of miles into space. Scientists are still researching how and why prominences are formed.

The red-glowing looped material is plasma, a hot gas comprised of electrically charged hydrogen and helium. The prominence plasma flows along a tangled and twisted structure of magnetic fields generated by the sun’s internal dynamo. An erupting prominence occurs when such a structure becomes unstable and bursts outward, releasing the plasma.

Image Credit: Eduardo Schaberger Poupeau
Capture Location: Rafaela, Provincia de Santa Fe, Argentina

Eduardo's Website: 

https://www.eduardoschaberger.ar
Caption Credit: NASA Goddard/Eduardo Schaberger Poupeau/SpaceWeather[dot]com
Image Date: Oct. 29, 2024

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