Celestial Laser Show? Nope, These Are Trails Showing Off Star Colors

Star trails above the European Space Observatory's Paranal Observatory in Chile, showing three of the four auxiliary telescopes of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI). Credit: ESO/B. Tafreshi

There are so many colorful streaks in that image above that you’d be forgiven for thinking somebody is shooting lasers around the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile. Actually, though, this demonstrates a common technique for astronomy photo-taking where you do a time lapse to watch the stars moving as the Earth makes its daily rotation.

The image of auxiliary telescopes of Very Large Telescope Interferometer is not only pretty, but does have some scientific interest as well, ESO said.

“This technique … enhances the natural colours of the stars, which gives an indication of their temperature, ranging from about 1000 degrees Celsius [1,832 Fahrenheit] for the reddest stars to a few tens of thousands of degrees Celsius [or Fahrenheit] for the hottest, which appear blue. The sky in this remote and high location in Chile is extremely clear and there is no light pollution, offering us this amazing light show,” stated the European Southern Observatory.

According to ESO, these supplementary telescopes working together allow astronomers to “see details up to 25 times finer than with the individual telescopes.” You can read more about the VLTI at this ESO link, which includes some interesting facts — such as why the interferometers are named Antu, Kueyen, Melipal and Yepun.

Source: European Southern Observatory

Watch a Star Blast Out Waves of Light

Hubble image of variable star RS Puppis (NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team)

6,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Puppis an enormous star pulses with light and energy, going through the first throes of its death spasms as it depletes its last reserves of hydrogen necessary to maintain a stable, steady radiance. This star, a Cepheid variable named RS Puppis, brightens and dims over a 40-day-long cycle, and newly-released observations with Hubble reveal not only the star but also the echoes of its bright surges as they reflect off the dusty nebula surrounding it.

The image above shows RS Puppis shining brilliantly at the center of its dusty cocoon. (Click the image for a super high-res version.) But wait, there’s more: a video has been made of the variable star’s outbursts as well, and it’s simply mesmerizing. Check it out below:

Assembled from observations made over the course of five weeks in 2010, the video shows RS Puppis pulsing with light, outbursts that are then reflected off the structure of its surrounding nebula. What look like expanding waves of gas are really “light echoes,” radiation striking the densest rings of reflective dust located at farther and farther distances from the star.

According to the NASA image description:

RS Puppis rhythmically brightens and dims over a six-week cycle. It is one of the most luminous in the class of so-called Cepheid variable stars. Its average intrinsic brightness is 15,000 times greater than our sun’s luminosity.

The nebula flickers in brightness as pulses of light from the Cepheid propagate outwards. Hubble took a series of photos of light flashes rippling across the nebula in a phenomenon known as a “light echo.” Even though light travels through space fast enough to span the gap between Earth and the moon in a little over a second, the nebula is so large that reflected light can actually be photographed traversing the nebula. (Source)

RS Puppis is ten times more massive than our Sun, and 200 times larger.

Cepheid variables are more than just fascinating cosmic objects. Their uncanny regularity in brightness allows astronomers to use them as standard candles for measuring distances within our galaxy as well as others — which is trickier than it sounds. Because of its predictable variation along with the echoing light from its surrounding nebula, the distance to RS Puppis (6,500 ly +/- 90) has been able to be calculated pretty accurately, making it an important calibration tool for other such stars. (Read more here.)

Source: ESA news release

Full image credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-Hubble/Europe Collaboration. Acknowledgment: H. Bond (STScI and Penn State University)

P.S.: Cepheid variables don’t last forever, though — sometimes they stop.

When Is a Star Not a Star?

Artist's impression of a Y-dwarf, the coldest known type of brown dwarf star. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

When it’s a brown dwarf — but where do we draw the line?

Often called “failed stars,” brown dwarfs are curious cosmic creatures. They’re kind of like swollen, super-dense Jupiters, containing huge amounts of matter yet not quite enough to begin fusing hydrogen in their cores. Still, there has to be some sort of specific tipping point, and astronomers (being the scientists that they are) would like to know: when does a brown dwarf stop and a star begin?

Researchers from Georgia State University now have the answer.

From a press release issued Dec. 9 from the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO):

For most of their lives, stars obey a relationship referred to as the main sequence, a relation between luminosity and temperature – which is also a relationship between luminosity and radius. Stars behave like balloons in the sense that adding material to the star causes its radius to increase: in a star the material is the element hydrogen, rather than air which is added to a balloon. Brown dwarfs, on the other hand, are described by different physical laws (referred to as electron degeneracy pressure) than stars and have the opposite behavior. The inner layers of a brown dwarf work much like a spring mattress: adding additional weight on them causes them to shrink. Therefore brown dwarfs actually decrease in size with increasing mass.

Read more: The Secret Origin Story of Brown Dwarfs

As Dr. Sergio Dieterich, the lead author, explained, “In order to distinguish stars from brown dwarfs we measured the light from each object thought to lie close to the stellar/brown dwarf boundary. We also carefully measured the distances to each object. We could then calculate their temperatures and radii using basic physical laws, and found the location of the smallest objects we observed (see the attached illustration, based on a figure in the publication). We see that radius decreases with decreasing temperature, as expected for stars, until we reach a temperature of about 2100K. There we see a gap with no objects, and then the radius starts to increase with decreasing temperature, as we expect for brown dwarfs. “

Dr. Todd Henry, another author, said: “We can now point to a temperature (2100K), radius (8.7% that of our Sun), and luminosity (1/8000 of the Sun) and say ‘the main sequence ends there’ and we can identify a particular star (with the designation 2MASS J0513-1403) as a representative of the smallest stars.”

The relation between size and temperature at the point where stars end and brown dwarfs begin (based on a figure from the publication) Image credit: P. Marenfeld & NOAO/AURA/NSF.
The relation between size and temperature at the point where stars end and brown dwarfs begin (based on a figure from the publication) Image credit: P. Marenfeld & NOAO/AURA/NSF.

“We can now point to a temperature (2100K), radius (8.7% that of our Sun), and luminosity (1/8000 of the Sun) and say ‘the main sequence ends there’.”

Dr. Todd Henry, RECONS Director

Aside from answering a fundamental question in stellar astrophysics about the cool end of the main sequence, the discovery has significant implications in the search for life in the universe. Because brown dwarfs cool on a time scale of only millions of years, planets around brown dwarfs are poor candidates for habitability, whereas very low mass stars provide constant warmth and a low ultraviolet radiation environment for billions of years. Knowing the temperature where the stars end and the brown dwarfs begin should help astronomers decide which objects are candidates for hosting habitable planets.

The data came from the SOAR (SOuthern Astrophysical Research) 4.1-m telescope and the SMARTS (Small and Moderate Aperture Research Telescope System) 0.9-m telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile.

Read more here.

‘Glowing Wreck Of A Star’ Reveals Cosmic Cannibalism

Composite image of Circinus X-1, which is about 24,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Circinus. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison/S. Heinz et al; Optical: DSS; Radio: CSIRO/ATNF/ATCA

Circinus X-1 may look like a serene place from a distance, but in reality this gassy nebula is quite a busy spot. Embedded in the nebula is the neutron star that is also a leftover of the supernova that produced the gas. Not only that, but the neutron star is still locked on to a companion and is in fact “cannibalizing” it, astronomers said.

The “glowing wreck of a star”, as the team called it, is exciting because it demonstrates what systems look like in the first stages after an explosion. The nebula is an infant in cosmic terms, with an upper limit to its age of just 4,500 years. To put that in human terms, that’s around the time of the first civilizations (such as in Mesopotamia).

“The fact that we have this remnant along with the neutron star and its companion means we can test all kinds of things,” stated Sebastian Heinz, an astronomy professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who led the research.

“Our observations solve a number of puzzles both about this object and the way that neutron stars evolve after they are born. For example, the unusual elliptical orbit on which these two stars swing around each other is exactly what you would expect for a very young X-ray binary.”

X-ray binaries are typically made up of a black hole or a neutron star that is locked on to a “normal” companion star such as that of our sun. That star won’t stay normal forever, however, as it’s being subject to very intense gravity from the black hole or neutron star. Its starstuff is being pulled off, heated, and then emitting radiation in X-rays that are easily trackable across the universe.

While X-ray binaries have been spotted before, seeing one along with a nebula is something special. By comparison, the gas cloud doesn’t stick around for very long — just 100,000 years or so — while the stars can be there for a while longer.

Checking out this star system could not only teach scientists about stellar evolution, but about the nature of neutron stars. One thing puzzling the team right now is why the neutron star has a faint magnetic field, which stands against established theory. Further study will be required to figure out why it isn’t as strong as expected.

Combining observations done with ESO's Very Large Telescope and NASA's Chandra X-ray telescope, astronomers have uncovered the most powerful pair of jets ever seen from a stellar black hole. The black hole blows a huge bubble of hot gas, 1,000 light-years across or twice as large and tens of times more powerful than the other such microquasars. The stellar black hole belongs to a binary system as pictured in this artist's impression.  Credit: ESO/L. Calçada
A binary X-ray system with a black hole (right) and companion star. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

This high-resolution view from NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Telescope and the Australia Telescope Compact Array, however, has revealed some new things.

“I have been perplexed by the unusually strong evolution of the orbit of Circinus X-1 since my graduate-school days,” stated Niel Brandt, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University who is on the team. “The discovery now of this system’s youth provides a satisfying explanation for why its orbit evolves so strongly — because the system likely still is settling down after its violent birth.”

You can read more in the Dec. 4 publication in The Astrophysical Journal or, in prepublished form, on Arxiv.

Sources: University of Wisconsin-Madison and Pennsylvania State University

This Spooky X-Ray ‘Hand’ Demonstrates A Pulsar Star Mystery

This X-ray nebula appears to look like a human hand. The ghostly shape comes courtesy of a pulsar star called PSR B1509-58 (B1509 for short) that is just 12 miles or 19 kilometers in diameter. The nebula itself is 150 light-years across. Image taken by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. Credit: NASA/CXC/CfA/P. Slane et al.

That spooky hand in the image above is producing questions for scientists. While the shape only coincidentally looks like a human hand, scientists are still trying to figure out how a small star produced such a large shape visible in X-rays.

Pulsar star PSR B1509-58 (or B1509 for short) is a 12-mile (19-kilometer) remnant of a much larger star that exploded and left behind a quickly spinning neutron star. Energy leaves mostly via neutrino (or neutral particle) emission, with a bit more coming out via beta decay, or a radioactive process where charged particles leave from atoms.

Using a new model, scientists found that so much energy comes out from neutrino emission that there shouldn’t be enough left for the beta decay to set off the X-rays you see here in this image, or in other situations. Yet it’s still happening. And that’s why they’re hoping to take a closer look at the situation.

Artist's conception of a neutron star flare. Credit: University of California Santa Cruz
Artist’s conception of a neutron star flare. Credit: University of California Santa Cruz

“Scientists are intrigued by what exactly powers these massive explosions, and understanding this would yield important insights about the fundamental forces in nature, especially on the astronomical/cosmological scale,” stated Peter Moller, who is with the theoretical division of Los Alamos National Laboratory and participated in the research.

Preliminary studies indicate that to better understand what’s happening on the surface of these objects, computer models must endeavor to “describe the shape of each individual nuclide” (or atom that has a certain number of protons and neutrons in its nucleus). That’s because not all of these nuclides are simple spheres.

Using facilities at Los Alamos, scientists created databases with different types of nuclides that had various beta-decay properties. They then plugged this into a Michigan State University model of neutron stars to see what energy was released as the stars accrete or come together.

Accretion can cause neutron stars to flare violently
Accretion can cause neutron stars to flare violently

The results stood against what was a “common assumption”, the scientists stated, that the radioactive action would be enough to power the X-rays. They urge more study on this front, especially using a proposed Facility for Rare Isotope Beams that would be built at Michigan State, using funding from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. FRIB project participants are hoping that will be ready in the 2020s.

You can read more about the research in the Dec. 1 edition of Nature. It was led by Hendrik Schatz, a professor at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State.

Source: Los Alamos National Laboratory

Exploring Our Galaxy’s Ancient Brown Dwarfs

A brown dwarf from the thick-disk or halo is shown. Although astronomers observe these objects as they pass near to the solar system, they spend much of their time away from the busiest part of the Galaxy, and the Milky Way's disk can be seen in the background. Credit: John Pinfield

As the name implies, a brown dwarf is small… only about 7% the size of the Sun. As far as stellar senior citizens go, they’re cool. Zipping along through space at speeds of 100 to 200 kilometers per second, they may have formed back when our galaxy was young – perhaps 10 billion years ago. Now a team of astronomers headed by Dr. David Pinfield at the University of Hertfordshire has identified a pair of the oldest brown dwarfs known… a set of orbs which could be the harbinger of a huge amount of new, unseen objects.

Although we sometimes refer to them as stars, brown dwarfs are in a class of their own. Because they didn’t ignite in nuclear fusion, they don’t generate internal heat like an ordinary star. After they are formed, they continue to cool and fade as time passes. This process makes them very difficult to observe and the discovery of two very old brown dwarfs, with temperatures of 250-600 C is cause for astronomical excitement.

Just how did Pinfield’s team pick such tiny objects out of the vastness of space? The discovery was facilitated thanks to a survey made by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), a NASA observatory that scanned the mid-infrared sky from orbit in 2010 and 2011. The ancient objects are cataloged as WISE 0013+0634 and WISE 0833+0052, and they are located in the constellations of Pisces and Hydra. Because they are so elusive, they were also confirmed by large ground-based telescopes (Magellan, Gemini, VISTA and UKIRT).

However, identifying the pair wasn’t easy. Seeing through the eyes of infrared reveals a crowded space – one populated with reddened stars, distant background galaxies and pockets of nebulous gas and dust. Picking out such a small character from a stellar cast would be like finding one tiny pearl in the vastness of an ocean. But Pinfield’s researchers employed a new method which utilizes WISE’s capabilities. As it scanned the sky over and over again, it revealed the cool, brown dwarfs – picking up the faint signature that other searches had missed.

These two particular brown dwarfs are different from the other slow movers of their type. By studying their spectra, the astronomers have identified atmospheres almost entirely comprised of hydrogen. This sets them apart from younger stars which have an abundance of heavier elements. Does being lighter make them speedier? According to Pinfield, “Unlike in other walks of life, the galaxy’s oldest members move much faster than its younger population.”

Stars near to Sun are considered the “local volume” and are created with three overlapping populations – the thin disk, the thick disk and the halo. Each of these layers has a certain amount of age associated with it: the oldest being the thickest and its member stars move up and down at a higher rate of speed. The halo contains both disks, along with the initial materials which formed the very first stars. Thin disk objects abound in the local volume and account for about 97% of the local stars, while thick disk and halo objects are a meager 3%. Chances are, brown dwarfs belong to that smaller percentage which explains why these fast-moving thick-disk/halo objects are only now being revealed.

Just how many may await discovery? Scientists surmise there may be as many as 70 billion brown dwarfs in the galaxy’s thin disk, and the thick disk and halo take up significantly larger galactic volumes. Even at a tiny 3%, this means there could be an army of ancient brown dwarfs in the galaxy. “These two brown dwarfs may be the tip of an iceberg and are an intriguing piece of astronomical archaeology,” said Pinfield. “We have only been able to find these objects by searching for the faintest and coolest things possible with WISE. And by finding more of them we will gain insight into the earliest epoch of the history of the galaxy.”

Original Story Source: Royal Astronomical Society News Release. For further study: “A deep WISE search for very late type objects and the discovery of two halo/thick-disk T dwarfs: WISE 0013+0634 and WISE 0833+0052”, D. J. Pinfield et al, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, in press.

‘Elephant Trunks’ Crowd Distant Star Cluster, Raising New Questions About Stellar Formation

NGC 3572 seen with a 2.2-meter telescope at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile. Credit: ESO/G. Beccari

Star winds are pushing the gas around NGC 3572 into “elephant trunks”, as you can see if you look carefully as this picture snapped by a La Silla Observatory telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile. It’s a demonstration of the power of the youngster blue-white stars embedded in the cloud, which are generating huge gusts blowing the gas and dust away from them.

It’s common for young stars to form in groups. After a few million years growing together, their respective gravities pushes everything further apart, and the stars then finish their lifetimes on their own. Looking at young star clusters such as this gives astronomers a better sense about how our own Sun began its life.

If we zoomed closer to those elephant trunks, they would look similar to the famous “Pillars of Creation” image captured in 1995 by the Hubble Space Telescope in the Eagle Nebula (M16). NASA also did a follow-up observation using infrared wavelengths in 2005 and 2011, which made the young stars a bit easier to see amid the gas and dust.

One of the Hubble Space Telescope's most famous images, the "Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle Nebula. Credit: NASA/ESA
One of the Hubble Space Telescope’s most famous images, the “Pillars of Creation” in the Eagle Nebula. Credit: NASA/ESA

As for the picture of NGC 3572, the high-resolution image from the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope is also revealing new mysteries that will require further investigation, ESO stated.

“A strange feature captured in this image is the tiny ring-like nebula located slightly above the centre of the image,” ESO wrote. “Astronomers still are a little uncertain about the origin of this curious feature. It is probably a dense leftover from the molecular cloud that formed the cluster, perhaps a bubble created around a very bright hot star. But some authors have considered that it may be some kind of oddly shaped planetary nebula — the remnants of a dying star.”

Astronomers were also surprised by seeing stars older than 10 million years old within this image that were still picking up mass, which implies that planetary formation could take longer than previously believed.

Research was led by ESO astronomer Giacomo Beccari.

Source: European Southern Observatory

Supersonic Starbirth Bubble Glows In Image From Two Telescopes

Stellar birth is visible in this image of HH 46/47 taken with the Spitzer Space Telescope and Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ALMA

Talk about birth in the fast lane. Fresh observations of HH 46/47 — an area well-known for hosting a baby star — demonstrate material from the star pushing against the surrounding gas at supersonic speeds.

“HH” stands for Herbig-Haro, a type of object created “when jets shot out by newborn stars collide with surrounding material, producing small, bright, nebulous regions,” NASA stated. It’s a little hard to see what’s inside these regions, however, as they’re clouded by debris (specifically, gas and dust).

The Spitzer space telescope (which looks in infrared) and the massive Chilean Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) are both designed to look through the stuff to see what’s within. Here’s what they’ve spotted:

– ALMA: The telescope is showing that the gas is moving apart faster than ever believed, which could have echoes on how the star cloud is forming generally. “In turn, the extra turbulence could have an impact on whether and how other stars might form in this gaseous, dusty, and thus fertile, ground for star-making,” NASA added.

Another view of HH 46/47 with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Credit: ESO/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/H. Arce. Acknowledgements to Bo Reipurth
Another view of HH 46/47 with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Credit: ESO/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/H. Arce. Acknowledgements to Bo Reipurth

– Spitzer: Two supersonic blobs are emerging from the star in the middle and pushing against the gas, creating the big bubbles you can see here. The right-aiming blob has a lot more material to push through than the left one, “offering a handy compare-and-contrast setup for how the outflows from a developing star interact with their surroundings,” NASA stated.

“Young stars like our sun need to remove some of the gas collapsing in on them to become stable, and HH 46/47 is an excellent laboratory for studying this outflow process,” stated Alberto Noriega-Crespo, a scientist at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology.

“Thanks to Spitzer, the HH 46/47 outflow is considered one of the best examples of a jet being present with an expanding bubble-like structure.”

The ALMA observations of HH 46/47 were first revealed in detail this summer, in an Astrophysical Journal publication.

Source: NASA

What Are The Odds Of Spotting A Milky Way Supernova From Earth?

Artist illustration of supernova. Credit: NASA

An exploding star in our home galaxy might be visible to Earth in the next 50 years, astronomers say in a new calculation of the odds of a nearby supernova.

This explosion would be too faint to prove a hazard to Earthlings, and in fact it may not even be visible with the naked eye in the starry sky. Its heat signature, however, would be seen in the right kind of camera as long as we could swing a telescope there fast enough.

“For [researchers], this study suggests that they have a solid chance of doing something that’s never been done before: detect a supernova fast enough to witness what happens at the very beginning of a star’s demise,” wrote Ohio State University in a press release about the research, which was led by university astronomer researcher Scott Adams.

Fishing Boats Meet the Milky Way on the Isle of Wight (south of England) on May 16, 2013. Credit and copyright: Chad Powell.
Fishing Boats Meet the Milky Way on the Isle of Wight (south of England) on May 16, 2013. Credit and copyright: Chad Powell.

The challenge with observing a supernova in our own galaxy is the presence of cosmic dust that can sometimes obscure supernovae and other phenomena from our view. However, infrared light is not as badly affected by this and may be able to see something through the obscurity.

To jump on the supernova as it is happening, the scientists propose having a network in place to send out neutrino alerts when these particles, which would arrive at Earth first after an explosion, are detected on Earth. The key is to figure out the difference between neutrinos from space and neutrinos from other sources, such as nuclear reactors, the sun or even spurious glitches.

A University of Tokyo group led the building of a model of a new kind of neutrino detector, a model that is now operating underground in Japan. Called EGADS (Evaluating Gadolinium’s Action on Detector Systems), the water in the system would be “spiked” with a bit of gadolinium, which would reportedly assist with neutrino detections from outside of Earth.

The supernova that produced the Crab Nebula was detected by naked-eye observers around the world in 1054 A.D. This composite image uses data from NASA’s Great Observatories, Chandra, Hubble, and Spitzer, to show that a superdense neutron star is energizing the expanding Nebula by spewing out magnetic fields and a blizzard of extremely high-energy particles. The Chandra X-ray image is shown in light blue, the Hubble Space Telescope optical images are in green and dark blue, and the Spitzer Space Telescope’s infrared image is in red. The size of the X-ray image is smaller than the others because ultrahigh-energy X-ray emitting electrons radiate away their energy more quickly than the lower-energy electrons emitting optical and infrared light. The neutron star is the bright white dot in the center of the image.
The supernova that produced the Crab Nebula was detected by naked-eye observers around the world in 1054 A.D. This composite image uses data from NASA’s Great Observatories, Chandra, Hubble, and Spitzer, to show that a superdense neutron star is energizing the expanding Nebula by spewing out magnetic fields and a blizzard of extremely high-energy particles.

“When a neutrino from a Milky Way supernova enters the tank, it can collide with the water molecules and release energy, along with some neutrons,” Ohio State added. “Gadolinium has a great affinity for neutrons, and will absorb them and then re-emit energy of its own. The result would be one detection signal followed by another a tiny fraction of a second later—a “heartbeat” signal inside the tank for each detected neutrino.”

But what about a naked-eye supernova? The researchers say the probability of that is just 20% to 50% in the next century, with southern hemisphere residents having a better chance since more of the galaxy is visible there. The last instance of this happening, by the way, was in 1604.

The research paper is available now on prepublishing site Arxiv and will soon be published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Source: Ohio State University

Correction: This article has been changed to remove a reference to Ohio State University in the EGADS collaboration.

Watch the Sun Split Apart

Canyon of Fire on the Sun, Credit: NASA/SDO/AIA)

Here’s your amazing oh-my-gosh-space-is-so-cool video of the day — a “canyon of fire” forming on the Sun after the liftoff and detachment of an enormous filament on September 29-30. A new video, created from images captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and assembled by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, shows the entire dramatic event unfolding in all its mesmerizing magnetic glory.

Watch it below:

Solarrific! (And I highly suggest full-screening it in HD.) That filament was 200,000 miles long, and the rift that formed afterwards was well over a dozen Earths wide!

Captured in various wavelengths of light by SDO’s Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) the video shows the solar schism in different layers of the Sun’s corona, which varies greatly in temperature at different altitudes.

According to the description from Karen Fox at GSFC:

“The red images shown in the movie help highlight plasma at temperatures of 90,000° F and are good for observing filaments as they form and erupt. The yellow images, showing temperatures at 1,000,000° F, are useful for observing material coursing along the sun’s magnetic field lines, seen in the movie as an arcade of loops across the area of the eruption. The browner images at the beginning of the movie show material at temperatures of 1,800,000° F, and it is here where the canyon of fire imagery is most obvious.”

Now, there’s not really any “fire” on the Sun — that’s just an illustrative term. What we’re actually seeing here is plasma contained by powerful magnetic fields that constantly twist and churn across the Sun’s surface and well up from its interior. The Sun is boiling with magnetic fields, and when particularly large ones erupt from deep below its surface we get the features we see as sunspots, filaments, and prominences.

When those fields break, the plasma they contained gets blasted out into space as coronal mass ejections… and this is what typically happens when one hits Earth. (But it could be much worse.)

Hey, that’s what it’s like living with a star!

Stay up to date on the latest solar events on the SDO mission page here.