Another cloud free day in Scotland let me catch almost 9 hours of this huge and lively prom. Taken with my home made 90mm modded Coronado PST and DMK21 camera. Software: CdC, Eqmod, DSSR, AutoStakkert!, Wavesharp, DVS, Shotcut and Gimp.

David Wilson on April 8, 2025 @ Inverness, Scotland

https://spaceweathergallery2.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=221951

  • crapwittyname@lemm.ee
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    12 days ago

    Plasma is electrically charged, so it interacts with magnetic lines.
    The sun has magnetic field lines just as the earth does. It also rotates. But- since it’s not solid, it doesn’t have to rotate all at the same speed. The plasma in fast-rotating regions drags the field lines further than the plasma in slow rotating areas, creating weird loops, breaks and reconnections in the field lines. I’m almost certain that what we’re seeing in this lovely bit of photography is a cloud of plasma travelling across, or trapped by one of those rogue field lines which has been pushed upwards from the surface by differential rotation.

      • crapwittyname@lemm.ee
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        12 days ago

        Even cooler: solar flares and mass ejections come about when one of the lines snaps like a whip and hurls billions of tonnes of plasma into space. Search: solar magnetic reconnection.

          • crapwittyname@lemm.ee
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            12 days ago

            Yes, the material the streams are made of is magnetic, and there is a strong and unusual magnetic field around the sun. So those streams are trapped by magnetism.