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loveisamyth 68M
849 posts
5/28/2015 6:08 am

Last Read:
6/2/2015 7:27 am

GIANT FILAMENT IN 3D

The biggest thing on the sun today is not a sunspot. (In fact, the sun is almost completely spotless, but that's another story.) It's a vast filament of magnetism stretching almost 700,000 km across the solar disk. Cross your eyes to see the filament in 3D.



Paco Bellido took these pictures on May 27th from his backyard observatory in Cordoba, Spain.

Giant filaments like this one are often unstable. They can erupt, hurling parts of themselves into space. Also, fragments falling back to the stellar surface explode, producing a type of flare called a Hyder flare. No sunspots are required for this kind of solar activity.

Readers with backyard solar telescopes are going to enjoy this.

NEVER LOOK AT THE SUN WITHOUT PROPER EYE PROTECTION!

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