STEREO Satellites Spot Solar Flare Tsunami

westtxfun writes "The STEREO satellites recently confirmed the existence of solar mega-tsunamis when they captured height data after a sunspot recently erupted. The scale of this tsunami literally dwarfs the Earth's diameter — it was 62,000 miles high and raced across the surface at 560,000 mph! STEREO A and B orbit 90 degrees apart and luckily, one was overhead while the other saw the eruption on the limb. This gave NASA scientists enough data to confirm the tsunami wasn't a shadow, solving a modern solar mystery. The images are simply stunning, to boot."

Comments

Re:It is probably 62 miles

[Remus Shepherd]

Did you see the animation? That wave looks to be easily 1/14th of the solar diameter, especially near the origin.

What I learned from this article is that sunspots explode. Never knew that; I thought they faded away...