Space Photographer Shares Stunning Video Of A Solar Feature

A video has surfaced on YouTube where a massive prominence can be seen on the Sun. It is so big that many users say the Sun appears to be breaking apart. The video also shows the prominence in motion along with an eruption of solar flare.

Shared on YouTube on Monday by Space Movie, the video has amassed over 15,000 views. The page has a collection of astro images and time lapses captured by Dr Sebastian Voltmer.

“Today, I pointed my telescope at the sun. See what I got. This huge eruption is 20 times the size of Earth,” he said in the video.

According to Newsweek, large, brilliant loops of plasma-electrically charged hydrogen and helium gas that stretch from the Sun’s surface are known as solar prominences. They are occasionally tens of times bigger than the Earth, making them very gigantic in size.

The images were captured through Dr Sebastian’s Daystar Quark H-alpha filter system.

Even though they can take only a day to produce, solar prominences can be stable enough to last for months while circling hundreds of thousands of kilometres into space and remaining tied to the surface of the sun, reported Newsweek.

Dr Sebastian also tweeted a photograph on Twitter and wrote, “There is currently a huge #prominence visible on the #Sun. That’s impressive, but it was spectacular to see a very fast-moving part of it through my small refractor telescope – ejecting and detaching to the side. Images captured through my #Daystar #Quark.”

According to American space agency NASA, scientists are unsure exactly how solar prominences arise. It is believed that they flow along the Sun’s tangled and contorted magnetic field lines.

Spaceweather.com said in an article that suddenly, solar prominences might collapse completely. This phenomenon occurs when the magnetic field in their area becomes unstable, such as if a new magnetic field line pokes through the sun’s surface beneath the prominence.