'Deathstar' like object spotted near sun

Source: Yahoo!7 News
March 15, 2012, 11:28 am

A NASA video of a dark, disc shaped object hovering near the sun has set off a wave of speculation online as amateur astronomers try to figure out what the object could be.

The video, taken from a NASA satellite and uploaded to Youtube by a man calling himself SunsFlare, shows a huge round object floating near the sun, with a large 'twister tail' extending from it.

The video shows the sun's rays bursting out from the surface, but a large circular object remains black, with a dark 'twister tail' remaining connected to the sun.

"I have no idea what it is", SunsFlare says, "There's something in the plasma field that would definitely be affected by the [burst of energy]."

Over 380,000 people have viewed the video in the few days since it was uploaded.

Is it the Deathstar?

A NASA video of a dark, disc shaped object hovering near the sun has set off a wave of speculation online.

However NASA says it has an explanation for the anomaly.

It's not the Deathstar, another planet being born or a UFO full of little green men as some viewers suspected.
It's simply a filament, or prominence.

NASA says a filament is a "large, bright feature extending outward from the Sun's surface. [Filaments] are anchored to the Sun's surface in the photosphere, and extend outwards into the Sun's hot outer atmosphere, called the corona."

But NASA can't explain why the object is cooler than the energy around it, and therefore remains dark when viewed from NASA’s telescope.

A NASA astrophysicist says the image is completely normal.

"Filaments appear to be dark because they're cooler in relation to what's in the background. When you look at it from the edge of the sun, what you see is this spherical object and you're actually looking down the tunnel."

NASA says it is rare for a prominence to form as such a distinct shape however.
Generally, a prominence comes in the form of a violent outburst, rather than the sphere seen in the video above.

Sun's deadly dance caught on camera

Source:
Yahoo!7
February 18, 2012, 9:40 am

Astronomers were given a spectacular show on the sun as a "solar tornado" made its way across the surface.

The footage, captured over a 30-hour period by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. captures the slow-moving solar flares as they danced across the surface.

The large solar "tornadoes" blasted across the surface of the sun on February 7 and 8, and are formed by the magnetic field created by the star.

"An active region rotating into view provides a bright backdrop to the gyrating streams of plasma," SDO mission scientists were quoted as saying on space.com. "The particles are being pulled this way and that by competing magnetic forces. They are tracking along strands of magnetic field lines."

Sun's giant sunspot unleashes powerful flare

Spectacular Solar Fire Show from Sun

Source: yahoo 7 News
Space.com
November 6, 2011, 10:55 am

Fierce storm sparks massive solar flare

Yahoo!7 Technology News

Sun's spectacular fire show

The Sun has unleashed one of the most powerful storms ever, triggering massive solar flares.

Sun's earlier storms captured

                           Solar flare. Photo: space.com

A powerful solar flare that erupted on Nov 3 from a huge blemish on the sun's surface has been classified as an X1.9 flare, ranking it in among the most powerful types of storms from our star can unleash.

The flare originated in a humongous sunspot that was sighted earlier this week, which ranks as one of the largest sunspots seen in years.

The flare "triggered some disruption to radio communications on Earth beginning about 45 minutes later," NASA officials wrote in a statement. "Scientists are continuing to watch this active region as it could well produce additional solar activity as it passes across the front of the sun."

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory and twin Stereo sun-watching spacecraft snapped photos and video of the huge solar flare during solar storm.

A flare is a powerful release of energy that brightens the sun, and is often associated with an area of increased magnetic activity on the solar surface. This magnetic activity can also inhibit the flow of heat to the surface in a process called convection, creating darkened areas on the face of the sun called sunspots.

The huge active region on the sun right now, called AR11339, is about 80,000 km long, several times wider than the Earth.

"This large and complex active region just rotated onto the disk and we will watch it for the next 10 days," astronomers with NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite wrote in an update.
Later on the same day as the flare, in another area of the sun, a burst of charged particles called a coronal mass ejection released from the surface.

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This eruption came from the back side of the sun and is headed toward the planet Venus, so should not pose any risk to Earth.

Because NASA has a suite of spacecraft observing the sun at all times from many directions, the agency was able to observe the coronal mass ejection as well as the solar flare.

Scientists say we probably haven't seen the last of activity from this dynamic region of the sun.
"The large, bright active region remains potent," officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "Odds are good there's more to come."

And recent events are just part of a larger ramping up of action on the sun lately, as our star moves toward the peak of activity in its 11-year cycle around 2013.

Doomsday comet' to pass by Earth

Excellent article about the our universe
Source: Yahoo 7 News
Space.com
October 15, 2011, 7:52 am

The moment long feared by conspiracy theorists is nearly upon us: The "doomsday comet" Elenin will make its closest approach to Earth on Oct. 16.

Or what's left of it will, anyway.

Comet Elenin started breaking up in August after being blasted by a huge solar storm, and a close pass by the sun on Sept 10 apparently finished it off, astronomers say.

So what will cruise within 35.4 million kilometers of our planet Sunday is likely to be a stream of debris rather than a completely intact comet.

And the leftovers of Elenin won't return for 12,000 years, astronomers say.

"Folks are having trouble finding it, so I think it's probably dead and gone," said astronomer Don Yeomans of the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
That means it probably won't present much of a skywatching show on Sunday, scientists have said.

The doomsday comet

Elenin's apparent demise may come as a relief to some folks, since apocalyptic rumors circulating on the Internet portrayed the comet as a major threat to Earth.

One theory claimed Elenin would set off havoc on Earth after aligning with other heavenly bodies, spurring massive earthquakes and tsunamis. Another held that Elenin was not a comet at all, but in fact a rogue planet called Nibiru that would bring about the end times on Earth.

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After all, the comet's name could be taken as a spooky acronym: "Extinction-Level Event: Nibiru Is Nigh."

Those ideas were pure nonsense, Yeomans said.

"Elenin was a second-rate, wimpy little comet that never should have been noted for anything, really," he told SPACE.com. "It was not even a bright one."

Elenin's remains will not be the only objects about to make their closest pass of Earth. One day after the Elenin flyby, the small asteroid 2009 TM8 will zip close by. Like Elenin, it poses no risk of striking our home planet.

Asteroid 2009 TM8 is about 6.4 meters wide and the size of a schoolbus. It will come within 212,000 miles of Earth – just inside the orbit of the moon – when it zips by on Monday morning (Oct. 17).
Say goodbye to Elenin

Elenin was named after its discoverer, Russian amateur astronomer Leonid Elenin, who spotted it in December 2010. Before the icy wanderer broke up, its nucleus was likely 2 to 3 miles (3 to 5 km) in diameter, scientists say.

Amazing space photos. Photo: Getty Images

Elenin never posed any threat to life on Earth, Yeomans said. It was far too small to exert any appreciable influence on our planet unless it managed to hit us.

"Just driving to work every day in my subcompact car is going to have far more of a gravitational effect on Earth than this comet ever will," Yeomans said.

Elenin's supposed connection to earthquakes was just a correlation, and a weak one at that, he added. Relatively strong earthquakes occur every day somewhere on Earth, so it's easy — but not statistically valid — to blame some of them on the comet's changing position.

Yeomans views the frenzy over Elenin as a product of the Internet age, which allows loud and often uninformed voices to drown out the rather more prosaic results that scientists publish in peer-reviewed journals.

"It's a snowball effect on the Web," Yeomans said. "You get one or two folks who make an outrageous claim, and a bunch of others pile on. Some folks are actually making a living this way."
Elenin's crumbs will soon leave Earth in the rear-view mirror, speeding out on a long journey to the outer solar system. But Yeomans doesn't think the departure will keep the conspiracy theorists down for long.

"It's time to move on to the next armageddon," he said.

You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

NASA space storm captured from the sun

For the first time a spacecraft able to witness how a solar storm surrounds our planet. The video shown today by NASA in a press conference, has surprised the experts.
Sourse: RPP