Tag Archives: carves

Colossal Eruption Carves ‘Canyon of Fire’ Onto the Sun’s Surface

Colossal Eruption Carves ‘Canyon of Fire’ Onto the Sun’s Surface

On July 15, a solar filament erupted from the Sun’s upper left side, ejecting a powerful blast of plasma and magnetic fields into space. The resulting explosion was so massive that it seared a deep, fiery scar of hot plasma and debris onto the star’s visible surface. While filament eruptions aren’t uncommon, astronomers had already been watching an unusually large …

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Colossal eruption carves 250,000-mile-long ‘canyon of fire’ into the sun (video)

Colossal eruption carves 250,000-mile-long ‘canyon of fire’ into the sun (video)

On July 15, a colossal filament erupted from the sun’s northeastern limb, dramatically reshaping part of our star’s surface, albeit briefly, and unleashing a coronal mass ejection (CME) into space. The outburst was so powerful that it carved a glowing trench of hot plasma more than 250,000 miles (about 400,000 kilometers) long, roughly the distance from Earth to the moon. …

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