NEW SUNSPOT: Sunspot AR2814 has doubled in size since yesterday, when it first appeared in the sun's southern hemisphere. The active region is crackling with minor B-class solar flares and poses a growing threat for stronger C-class eruptions. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text.
SOLAR TORNADO SPINS OFF THE SUN: Yesterday, April 12th, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory watched a towering cloud of plasma spin up, and off, the surface of the sun. The tornado in this movie is 10 times taller than Earth itself:
Unlike tornadoes on Earth, which are shaped by wind, tornadoes on the sun are controlled by magnetism. Solar magnetic fields twist in a furious spiral, dragging clouds of plasma around with them. The April 12th twister overtorqued itself and hurled a cloud of magnetized gas into space.
Coronagraphs onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) captured the resulting coronal mass ejection (CME):
This is called a "flux rope CME" because the CME is literally a rope--a helical twist of magnetic fields hundreds of thousands of kilometers long. When flux ropes are viewed from the side, they look like a coiled lasso.
NOAA forecasters have analyzed the trajectory of this CME. It will miss Earth. Maybe next time!
Note: A few years ago, researchers discovered that not all solar tornadoes are true twisters. Sometimes, complex dynamics in magnetic fields create the appearance of spin where no spin exists. In this case, however, the motions we see in the SDO movie + the coiled structure of the CME suggest genuine rotation.
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