onsdag 30 november 2011

Ginormous sunspot spews solar guts towards Earth

 

Ginormous sunspot spews solar guts towards Earth



Our own star has developed an astonishingly huge case of hyperactive acne, with one blemish so large you could plop 18 or 19 earths onto it, and still have room to spare.
That is, of course, if you could maneuver them close enough without the planets melting, or being sucked into that big ol' ball-o-plasma's guts.
At 1900 universal time on Thursday, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) observed an exceptionally large sunspot as it rotated into view. It's a biggie: sun-boffins estimate it to be about 80,000 kilometers long and 50,000 kilometers wide – easily one of the largest such magnetic disturbances to speckle the sun in many a year.

Inga kommentarer: