Amateur astronomer Andrew McCarthy from Australia captured a 1.6 million km long plasma ejection from the Sun. It occurred at the end of September during a small flare. It indicates that the activity of our luminary is growing.
Astronomer captured plasma ejection
Amateur astronomer from Australia Andrew McCarthy has published an amazing picture of a plasma stream escaping from the Sun. Its length is 1.6 million kilometers. The image was obtained on September 24, when a small-scale solar flare occurred on the surface of our luminary.
Despite the fact that the flare itself caused a geomagnetic storm of category G1, the smallest possible, the volume of plasma that was ejected into space was impressive. Its speed reached 161,000 km/s, that is, it exceeded half the speed of light.
Initially, the plasma was in a giant protuberance, which exploded during the outbreak and part of it flew into space. According to McCarthy, this is the biggest such event that he has ever witnessed.
The astronomer observed the Sun for six hours. His camera produced 30 to 80 frames every second. All together they were combined into one large file, which allowed us to consider the coronal mass ejection.
How was the image obtained?
It was one of the images from this file that McCartney published. On it, both the solar corona and the plasma ejection have an orange color. But this is an artificial coloring that an astronomer gave them to smooth out the shooting effect a little.
In fact, the plasma of the solar corona has a red-pink color. But because of the minimal shutter speed in the picture, it looked rather white. In order for the image to show more details, the astronomer gave it artificial colors.
Recently, coronal mass ejections have become more frequent. And in October, very powerful flashes were added to them. This cycle turned out to be much more active than all the previous ones, and as its maximum approaches, the Sun will become more and more active.
According to www.sciencealert. com
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