Solar Prominence Seen Collapsing Off of the Sun: How Will It Affect Earth?

An image of the sun with a large solar prominence that appears to be breaking apart was shared by a space photographer.

Large, bright loops of electrically charged hydrogen and helium gas is known as solar prominences project outward from the sun's surface. They are occasionally tens of times bigger than the Earth, making them truly massive in size.

Even though they can take only a day to form, solar prominences can be stable enough to last for months while looping hundreds of thousands of miles into space and remaining anchored to the surface of the sun, Newsweek reports.

According to NASA, although scientists are unsure exactly how solar prominences form, it is believed that they flow along the sun's tangled and contorted magnetic field lines.

Sebastian Voltmer, an astrophotographer, tweeted on Sunday with a picture of what he described as a "huge prominence" on the sun's surface. He continued that the solar prominence is quite impressive, but it was spectacular to see a very quick-paced part of it ejecting and detaching to the side through his small refractor telescope.

According to the space weather news website spaceweather.com, the prominence in the photo "might be coming apart."

The Realtime Image Gallery on spaceweather.com has additional photos of the solar prominence taken last week.

The prominence and a material eruption from the sun's surface are both visible in the video footage that Voltmer also posted. In the video, he narrated that the enormous eruption is 20 times larger than the Earth.

Sometimes, solar prominences can break apart or collapse completely. According to David Hathaway, a solar physicist at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, this occurs when the magnetic field in their vicinity becomes unstable, such as if a new magnetic field line pokes through the surface of the sun beneath the prominence.

A Hyder flare, so named after Charles Hyder, the astrophysicist who studied these events, is a consequence of the collapse of a solar prominence, which can result in an explosion of material away from the sun, Newsweek reports.

Special Equipment for Safety

It is important to note that astrophotographers taking images of solar prominences, flares, CMEs, or any other images of the sun are using special filters that enable them to do so safely. Experts warn that looking at the sun directly, without any proper protection can burn the eye's retina. Sky & Telescope magazine says that this action will leave a permanent blind spot.

Prominence vs. Solar Flares vs. Coronal Mass Ejections

It is important to distinguish between solar prominences and solar flares, which are sudden bursts of light and radiation that are produced by tangled magnetic field lines close to the sun's dark spots.

Coronal mass ejections, which are sizable clouds of charged solar particles that can interact with the Earth's atmosphere and trigger a geomagnetic storm, should also not be confused with them.

And, as previously stated, solar prominences are enormous, brilliant loops of electrically charged hydrogen and helium gas that extend outward from the sun's surface. They are truly massive in size, sometimes tens of times larger than the Earth.