NASA released a video captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory's Atmospheric Imaging Assembly instrument July 19 last year of an eruption that looks like rain on the sun.
An eruption on the sun that took place July 19 last year was found to be quite unique as it came with all three types of flares that are commonly associated with the event, NASA noted after releasing a video of the same.
Karen Fox, from Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center, said on the Space Agency's website that eruptions on the sun can be very different from each other. She explained the different types that are usually associated with an eruption. Some eruptions form with a solar flare, while others come with an "additional ejection of solar material called a coronal mass ejection (CME)."
Fox said there is a third type that comes with intricate moving structures in association with changes in magnetic field lines that loop up into the sun's atmosphere, the corona.
The video showed that this eruption had all three of them. First, quite a powerful solar flare exploded on the sun's lower right limb which was followed by a CME, which shot off to the right out into space and formed what is commonly known in space world as coronal rain, explained Fox
"Over the course of the next day, hot plasma in the corona cooled and condensed along strong magnetic fields in the region. Magnetic fields, themselves, are invisible, but the charged plasma is forced to move along the lines, showing up brightly in the extreme ultraviolet wavelength of 304 Angstroms, which highlights material at a temperature of about 50,000 Kelvin," she said. "This plasma acts as a tracer, helping scientists watch the dance of magnetic fields on the sun, outlining the fields as it slowly falls back to the solar surface."
Check out the video below:
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