An astrophotographer captured the 60,000-mile-tall wall of plasma towering over the Sun’s surface from his backyard.
The massive wall of plasma, known as a polar crown prominence (PCP), was captured by Eduardo Schaberger Poupeau, an astrophotographer who is based near Rafaela in Argentina.
The image was captured on March 9 using specialized camera equipment. The plasma wall “rose some 100,000 km [kilometers, or 62,000 miles] above the solar surface,” Poupeau told Spaceweather.com.
How tall is 60,000 miles? For context, just imagine eight Earths stacked on top of one another or over a quarter of the distance between Earth and the Moon. “On my computer screen, it looked like hundreds of threads of plasma were dripping down a wall,” Poupeau added.
Actually, PCPs are similar to normal solar prominences, which are loops of plasma, or ionized gas, that are ejected from the solar surface by magnetic fields, according to Live Science.
However, PCPs occur near the sun’s magnetic poles at latitudes between 60 and 70 degrees North and South, which often causes them to collapse back towards the sun because the magnetic fields near the poles are much stronger, according to NASA. This collapse back to the sun has earned them the nickname “plasma waterfalls.”
Since the plasma within PCPs is still trapped by the magnetic field that ejected them, it is not in freefall. As NASA said, the plasma moves downward at rates of up to 22,370 mph (36,000 km/h), which is significantly quicker than the magnetic fields should allow based on expert predictions. Researchers are still attempting to understand how this is achieved.
A 2021 study published in the journal Frontiers in Physics revealed that PCPs undergo two phases during an eruption. The first one is a slow phase where plasma shoots up while the second phase is fast where plasma accelerates towards its altitude peak. Further study is needed to determine whether this affects how the plasma falls back to the surface.
“Taking pictures of the sun is always super exciting for me. Every day, I am fascinated by the changing details on the sun’s surface, the movement of sunspots as they travel along with the solar rotation, and the transformations of filaments or sudden flares in active regions,” Schaberger Poupeau told IFLScience.
“While gratifying, this pursuit is also complicated and requires a great deal of patience. The quality of the sky plays a crucial role in obtaining good results, and I often must wait for long periods to capture the few moments of stability in the atmosphere necessary to produce the images.”
