Comments on: The August solar eruption, in HD video!

By: Oscar Ferro

Oscar Ferro — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 14:13:31 +0000

Please correct me if I’m wrong: We’re basically looking at perturbations in the Sun’s magnetic field.
Do these perturbations propagate at the speed of light (in that medium)?
That is, are we actually seeing changes in the solar magnetosphere travelling at the speed of light? I hope that’s right, because it blows my mind away.

By: La erupción solar del 31 de agosto de 2012 en vídeo | Noticias CEU

La erupción solar del 31 de agosto de 2012 en vídeo | Noticias CEU — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 10:36:33 +0000

[...] (El vídeo, vino eyectado desde Bad Astronomy). [...]

By: Joseph G

Joseph G — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 08:33:56 +0000

@ Noen: Larry Niven has a great short story I think you can read on the internet called “Inconstant Moon”. It’s a first person narrative where the narrator notices that the moon is really really really bright. The reason why it’s so bright turns out to be very bad news for everyone.

One of my favs Thankfully, not something that can ever happen, as far as we can tell (that is, a sudden flare, not the whole main sequence evolution into a red giant). That whole collection is all kinds of awesome. “Bordered in Black” is particularly chilling

By: Jon Hanford

Jon Hanford — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 17:38:45 +0000

“I guess the earth next to that is a small pebble in the video if it was there and I would be smaller than a pixel on the screen.”

Here’s an image with the Earth to scale:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/7936905134/in/set-72157631408160534/lightbox/

By: Mario John

Mario John — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 21:37:50 +0000

Can’t tell you how many times I’ve hit replay on this one. The sheer power and magnificence of our Sun, especially when viewed with modern instruments, is humbling. GFSC Multimedia site is worth the trip too.

By: cardoso

cardoso — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 16:33:30 +0000

I tremble when I realize the scale.

By: VinceRN

VinceRN — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 15:19:53 +0000

Wow.

By: Messier Tidy Upper

Messier Tidy Upper — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 11:55:32 +0000

Superluminous clip there. Jaw dropping. 8)

Our Sun is gorgeous, and dangerous, and amazing.

Add to that, kinda necessary for life here on Earth at least our variety of it and most of our planet’s ecosystems barring underground and abyssal oceanic floor ones.

Plus despite what you may read our Sun is *far* from an average star. Its actually in about the top five percent of stars for brightness, size and mass.

(Average stars are red dwarfs like Proxima Centauri , Lalande 21185 & Wolf 359 & not a single one is bright enough to be observed from here unaided eye. The superluminous celestial beacons that populate our night sky are super-rare but visible across such huger gulfs through their extreme radiance and girths.)

@9. noen : Yup. Awesome short story and more, incl. anthology title and TV episode.
(See wiki-link in my name here for source.)

By: noen

noen — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 00:16:51 +0000

Larry Niven has a great short story I think you can read on the internet called “Inconstant Moon”. It’s a first person narrative where the narrator notices that the moon is really really really bright. The reason why it’s so bright turns out to be very bad news for everyone.

By: Matt B.

Matt B. — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 21:05:51 +0000

Considering it would take something like 45-65 days (can’t remember the exact figure) for an object to fall into the sun from Earth’s distance, yet the CME got here in 4 days, it seems pretty safe to say that some of this material achieved escape velocity. Good to know.

I’m curious, how light would a solid object have to be to float high enough in the sun to get carried away with the CME? The sun’s average density is 1406 kg/m^3, but naturally I expect surface density to be less than that.