The Sun had a fit and popped off two large events at once early today, Jan. 28, 2011. A filament on the left side became unstable and erupted, while an M-1 flare (mid-sized) and a coronal mass ejection on the right blasted into space. Neither event was headed towards Earth. This SDO movie, which is from Jan. 26-28, 2011, shows several other flashes and bursting from the active region on the right as well.
If you remember, in December, solar physicists released their findings that near-synchronous explosions in the solar atmosphere – sometimes millions of kilometers apart – can be related.
You can see another view of the events as seen by the SOHO spacecraft below, and another version of the SDO data.
Here’s another multi-wavelength and closeup view of the events from SDO:
I was out at an event for schools yesterday with a couple of PST’s showing people the Sun. I believe we were watching that eruption on the left side in these images and it was spectacular! In H-alpha light, you saw the long strand of plasma in front of the Sun then extend way off the edge giving it a very 3-D look. If you have an H-alpha scope, I hope you got to see it…every day should be that good for observing!
Though I assume we have to be extra careful until the degree of correlation is worked out, “can be related” # “is related”. Patterns are mundane, meaningful patterns are sparser.
hale-bopp: Are you satisfied with the performance of those PSTs? I’ve been interested in getting a beginner solar scope, and that one is certainly affordable (at least, comparatively so)! But I’ve been worried that something that (comparatively) cheap will just be a piece of garbage.
Do you have any brief comments about the PST?