PROMINENCES

AND FLARES

Prominences are huge plumes of glowing gas that jut from the lower chromosphere into the corona

It is an arc of gas that erupts from the surface of the Sun.

PROMINENCE

Prominences can extend 30,000 miles (50,000 kilometers) or more above the sun's surface. Up on reaching this height, they can erupt for a few minutes to hours and send large amounts of material racing through the corona and outward into space.

Under favorable conditions, the gas in a prominence mayremain trapped in its magnetic prison and glow for weeks.

Sunspots also give birth to solar flares, which are brief but bright eruptions of hot gas in the chromosphere.

The Flare shown was an X-class Flare (most powerful) which occurred on August 9, 2011.

Solar flares were first observed in 1859 by Lord Richard C. Carrington.

The biggest solar storm ever recorded was the Carrington Flare of 1859. It was the first Solar Flare ever recorded.

One hypothesis suggests that flares arise when the field near a sunspot gets twisted by gas motions.

Closely related to flares, but on a much larger scale, are coronal mass ejections.

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are bursts of solar material (clouds of plasma and magnetic fields) that shoot off the sun's surface.

The most spectacular auroral events on Earth occur when one of these ejections strikes our planet .

Strong flares and coronal mass ejections can also disrupt communications, disable satellites, and even induce electric currents that force power grids to shut down.