An astonishing, gorgeous solar prominence

I really recommend fullscreen for this one.

From Youtube :

"A huge solar prominence erupted on Dec 6, 2010. This movie shows "cool" solar plasma (60,000-80,000 K, seen in He II 30.4 nm) in red and hot plasma (almost 1 million K, Fe IX 17.1 nm) in yellow, observed with the AIA instrument on SDO."

From Wikipedia :

"A prominence is a large, bright feature extending outward from the Sun's surface, often in a loop shape. Prominences are anchored to the Sun's surface in the photosphere, and extend outwards into the Sun's corona. While the corona consists of extremely hot ionized gases, known as plasma, which do not emit much visible light, prominences contain much cooler plasma, similar in composition to that of the chromosphere.
A prominence forms over timescales of about a day, and stable prominences may persist in the corona for several months. Some prominences break apart and give rise to coronal mass ejections. Scientists are currently researching how and why prominences are formed."

Some pictures!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Solar_Prominence_STEREO_Ahead.jpg

http://www.electric-cosmos.org/coronaloop_trace.jpg

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/449080main_img_feature_1650_4x3_946-710.jpg

http://ircamera.as.arizona.edu/NatSci102/NatSci102/images/solarfilament.gif

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