Photo #2 (Apr 2009)

A MAJOR SOLAR PROMINENCE FROM SOHO

Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations.
I may not reach them but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them,
and try to follow them.
                                 - Louisa May Alcott

Credit: SOHO - EIT Consortium, ESA, NASA

What's happened to our Sun? It was sporting a spectacular - but not very unusual - solar prominence. A solar prominence is a cloud of solar gas held above the Sun's surface by the Sun's magnetic field. In 2004, NASA's Sun-orbiting SOHO spacecraft imaged an impressively large prominence hovering over the surface, pictured above. The Earth would easily fit under the hovering curtain of hot gas. A quiescent prominence typically lasts about a month, and may erupt in a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) expelling hot gas into the Solar System. Although somehow related to the Sun's changing magnetic field, the energy mechanism that creates and sustains a Solar prominence is still a topic of research.

The sun, which gives life to every living organism on our planet, has been an object of contemplation, wonderment and speculation throiughout recorded history. My personal preference in metaphor is that the sun is parent to the planets in our solar system, providing energetic support on a spiritual as well as on physical levels of being.
                                 - Daniel Benor, MD