Just Missed An Energy Flare
This is one of the movies I promised in my last post. The movie begins with some bright white energetic eruptions already in progress. The eruptions fade away while gases swirl. Too bad I didn't start recording about 20 minutes sooner! Then I could have captured both the rise and fall of the eruption. One of these days I'll get lucky and timing will be better.
Here is a still image of sunspot 1319 showing its complicated structure and some areas of bright emission.
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| Sunspot 1319 in center. Sunspot neighbors above and below. (Click for full detail.) |
Even though I took meticulous care in the manual alignment of each frame in this movie, there is still a bit of jiggle in the final result. Apparently it takes only a few slightly misaligned frames to cause the annoying effect.
Watch this movie for a few minutes. You'll notice the hot, white, energetic interior underneath the cooler, darker, continuously churning gas plumes above. It looks like the hot white stuff wants to break out from the Sun. It ominously tests its bonds by brightening in several locations, including a winding network in the lower left.
I wish I had recorded the action for more than 33 minutes. What happened next? In my next post I'll have a 64-minute movie including this sunspot along with some others nearby. Maybe this 64-minute movie will capture more action!
The movie is very eerie. It's looks like the bright white part is trying to escape and then getting pulled back over and over again. It kind of also looks like a heart pulsing.
ReplyDeleteThat movie is amazing - I feel lucky that I get to see these observations of the sun - who knew all that activity was going on there? Ok, probably a lot of astronomers, but not many of us normal schmoes.
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