Forget the #supermoon, enjoy a #supersun, magnetically-suspended lines of plasma — arch across its face.

Fraser Cain

3:23 PM  -  Public

Forget the supermoon, enjoy a super sun

Alan Friedman is an unbelievable astrophotographer, specialized in the Sun. Check out this amazing image he captured.

For #sciencesunday

Super Moon? How About a Super Sun! »

On May 5, 2012, while everyone else was waiting for the “Super Moon” astrophotographer Alan Friedman was out capturing this super image of a super Sun from his back yard in Buffalo, NY! Taken with a s...

Taken with a specialized telescope that can image the Sun in hydrogen alpha light, Alan’s photo shows the intricate detail of our home star’s chromosphere — the layer just above its “surface”, or photosphere.

Prominences can be seen rising up from the Sun’s limb in several places, and long filaments — magnetically-suspended  lines of plasma — arch across its face. The “fuzzy” texture is caused by smaller features called spicules and fibrils, which are short-lived spikes of magnetic fields that rapidly rise up from the surface of the Sun.

On the left side it appears that a prominence may have had just detached from the Sun’s limb, as there’s a faint cloud of material suspended there.

Alan masterfully captures the Sun’s finer details in his images on a fairly regular basis… see more of his solar (and lunar, and… vintage headwear) photography on his blog site here.

Image © Alan Friedman. All rights reserved.

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David Andrews3:27 PM

+1

It astounds me that we can stare into the naked face of thermonuclear fusion..
Thanks +Fraser Cain for your contributions to my awesome stream.

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