Sun Dance

Sometimes, the surface of our Sun seems to dance. In the middle of 2012, for example, NASA’s Sun-orbiting Solar Dynamic Observatory spacecraft imaged an impressive Prominence that seemed to perform a running dive roll like an acrobatic dancer.

The dramatic explosion was captured in Ultraviolet Light in the featured time-lapse video covering about three hours. A looping Magnetic Field directed the flow of hot Plasma on the Sun. The scale of the dancing Prominence is huge — the entire Earth would easily fit under the flowing arch of hot gas.

A quiescent Prominence typically lasts about a month, and may erupt in a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) expelling hot gas into the Solar System. The energy mechanism that creates a solar Prominence is still a topic of research. Unlike 2012, this year the Sun’s surface is significantly more serene, featuring fewer spinning prominences, as it is near the minimum in its 11-year magnetic cycle.