Huge Magnetic Filament Erupts on the Sun

A magnetic filament more than 50 times the Earth’s width is erupting off the surface of the sun.

The loop of hot plasma has been snaking around the sun’s southeast limb since Dec. 4, and appears to be growing by the hour. When NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory saw it on Dec. 4, the filament was more than 250,000 miles long, about 30 times the diameter of the Earth. In this new image, taken at 9:30 a.m. PST on Dec. 6, the loop of charged plasma stretches more than 435,000 miles, the full radius of the sun.

So far the gigantic prominence has hung suspended peacefully above the sun’s surface, but this morning it started showing signs of instability. Long filaments like this one can break apart as coronal mass ejections, releasing tons of hot, charged material into the inner solar system and potentially causing magnetic storms on Earth. If the filament collapses in the next day or so, the results could be spectacular.

Huge Magnetic Filament Erupts on the Sun | Wired Science | Wired.com