SUPER SOLAR FILAMENT: It
is, arguably, the second biggest thing in the solar system. A filament
of magnetism almost 1,000,000 km long is stretching across the face of
the sun. Only the sun itself is bigger. Yesterday in the Canary Islands,
Frank A. Rodriguez used a Lunt Solar Telescope to photograph the super structure:
This is a solar filament,
a tendril of plasma held suspended above the surface of the sun by
magnetic forces. Filaments appear on the sun all the time, but this one
is unusually large, 5 to 10 times longer than ordinary filaments. If it
becomes unstable and erupts, it could hurl parts of itself into space.
Pieces of the filament falling back to the solar surface would
explode upon impact, sparking a Hyder flare.