Thanks Chuck, I have lots to learn. But having lots if fun doing it. This will be my first season with the coronado, and there was lots of activity on the sun today. I think I can safely say that. I think activity could cover a lot of things LOL. Mark Sent from my iPhone On Mar 28, 2013, at 6:36 PM, Chuck Hards <chuck.hards@gmail.com> wrote:
Just a minor point, Mark, but prominences are not CMEs. CMEs, prominences, and flares are often confused and the terms used interchagably but incorrectly.
Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) A major solar event in which a large amount of coronal mass (as much as 10^16 grams) is ejected from the sun at speed of tens of km/sec up to 1000 km/sec. CME's are thought to occur with a frequency of one per day. CMEs are an outflow of plasma from or through the solar corona. They are often, but not always, associated with erupting prominences, disappearing solar filaments, and/or flares. CMEs vary widely in structure, density, and velocity.
Prominence A term identifying cloud-like features in the solar atmosphere. The features appear as bright structures in the corona above the solar limb and as dark filaments when seen projected against the solar disk. These dark filaments are also called flocculi (plural of flocculus).
Flare A solar flare is a sudden brightening observed over the sun's surface or the solar limb, which is interpreted as a large energy release of up to 6 × 1025 joules. The do not necessarily occur in visible light. CMEs typically follow a flare.
All of these are associated with active regions on the sun, which are manifestations of magnetic field activity.
Glad you're having fun with the solar scope! When showing the sun to the public, I like to have a white-light view at the same image scale next to the H-a scope, for comparison. Sunspots are usually easier for people to see in white light, since they are not competing with all the other surface detail visible in H-a.
On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 4:33 PM, Mark Shelton <astroshelton@yahoo.com>wrote:
There was lots of activity this afternoon. Lots ofCME to look at, all around the sun.
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