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Amateur Astronomer Captures Incredible Movie of Looping Prominences on the Sun
Animation of looping prominences on the western limb of the Sun on August 20, 2013. Credit and copyright: Michel Collart.
This close-up movie of looping, dancing prominences on the Sun looks like something you’d see from one of the spacecraft we have studying the Sun, such as the Solar Dynamics Observatory. However, the images were taken from Earth by amateur astronomer Michel Collart from France. He was able to capture incredible detail (see his list of equipment below) of this region on the Sun’s western limb, and in a series of 120 frames, shows a lot of activity taking place on the morning of August 20, 2013.
It is easy to become mesmerized watching the matter ejected at high speed from the surface, then falling back down due to the Sun’s gravity.
“We saw beautiful loops this morning, and as a bonus, we see a beautiful ejection of matter from the left and return to its starting point — great!” Collart posted on the WebAstro Forum.
And while these loops are huge – see the image below comparing the size of the Earth and Moon to the prominences — this is just a small area of the Sun.
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Read the rest of Amateur Astronomer Captures Incredible Movie of Looping Prominences on the Sun (308 words)
© nancy for Universe Today, 2013. |
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Source: http://www.universetoday.com/104300/amateur-astronomer-captures-incredible-movie-of-looping-prominences-on-the-sun/
