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Astronomy Picture of the Day 4-18-03
NASA ^ | 4-18-03 | Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell

Posted on 04/17/2003 10:29:31 PM PDT by petuniasevan

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

2003 April 18
See Explanation.  Clicking on the picture will download
the highest resolution version available.

Double Eruptive Prominences
Credit: SOHO - EIT Consortium, ESA, NASA

Explanation: Lofted over the Sun on looping magnetic fields, large solar prominences are composed of relatively cool, dense plasma. When seen against the brilliant solar disk they appear as dark filaments, but these enormous magnetic structures are bright themselves when viewed against the blackness of space as they arc above the Sun's edge In a rare visual treat, these two solar prominences arising from the Sun's southern (lower) hemisphere were captured in extreme ultraviolet light by the EIT camera on board the space-based SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) on March 21. For scale, the pair of plasma loops stretch above the Sun to a height of about twenty times the diameter of planet Earth. In a matter of hours, these prominences apparently erupted away from the Sun's surface and may have been associated with a flare and coronal mass ejection.


TOPICS: Astronomy; Astronomy Picture of the Day; Science
KEYWORDS: prominence; soho; solar; sun
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To: petuniasevan
thank you for the posting ,and enjoy your vacation.
21 posted on 04/18/2003 11:50:40 PM PDT by green team 1999
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To: petuniasevan
RTGs aren't reactors. The heat generated by the decaying plutonium is used to create electrical power for the spacecraft. Any mission that goes past Mars must have RTGs due to the rapid decrease in solar intensity.

MD
22 posted on 04/21/2003 11:53:51 AM PDT by MikeD (Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist)
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To: MikeD
You're right, of course.

That's what I get for posting at 1:30 AM!

Thanks!
23 posted on 04/21/2003 4:34:23 PM PDT by petuniasevan (I'm a lefty. Left-handed. The only kind of lefty I've ever been.)
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