'CANYON OF FIRE' OPENS ON THE SUN: A
filament of magnetism stretching halfway across the sun erupted during
the late hours of April 4th (22:00-23:00 UT). The eruption
split the sun's atmosphere, hurling a CME into
space and creating a "canyon of fire,"
shown here in a movie recorded by the Solar Dynamics
Observatory:
The glowing walls of the
canyon trace the original channel where
the filament was suspended by magnetic forces above
the stellar surface. From end to end, the
structure stretches more than 300,000 km--a real Grand Canyon.
Fragments of the exploding
filament formed the core of a CME that raced away from the sun at
approximately 900 km/s (2 million mph): image.
Most of the CME will miss Earth, but a glancing blow cannot yet be
ruled out because SOHO coronagraph imagery is still incomplete. Stay
tuned for updates. Solar flare alerts: text, voice
