Post by Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe on Nov 23, 2006 0:19:19 GMT -6
Huge CME on far side of Sun
SOLAR BLAST: Something exploded on the far side of the sun yesterday.
The blast hurled a bright coronal mass ejection over the eastern limb
where the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) photographed it:
(keep in mind that ~110 planet earths could fit side-by-side across
the white ring in this actual image of yesterday's blast. the white
ring represents the sun's position-tom)
www.spaceweather.com/images2006/20nov06/c3_strip.gif
Here is a MUST SEE animation of the blast:
(again, for purposes of scale, apprx 110 planet earths could fit
across the white ring / diameter of the sun-tom)
www.spaceweather.com/images2006/20nov06/c3_strip_anim.gif
The source of the explosion could be a big sunspot which has just
appeared in holographic images of the sun's farside.
Advice to astronomers: keep an eye on the sun's eastern limb. The sun
is spinning, and it will turn the source of the blast toward Earth in
the days ahead.
www.spaceweather.com/
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This will be good for solar viewing as it comes around to face Earth.
I'll be at the Adler Planetarium for public solar viewing at the Observatory, and maybe can catch the area that the CME ejected from.