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

Surf's up

[Darth Sdlavrot]

kawabunga.

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...

Re:They really thought it might be a shadow?

[necro81]

It could be that a chunk of the CME was cold and not very luminous, but another chunk farther out was (the corona is very bright and hot, after all). Stereo images in multiple spectra, and it is well known that portions of the corona are much hotter than the surface of the sun, so it could be that in particular wavelengths the corona can cast shadows onto the sun's surface.

In any event, this was a comment made by a project scientist - a solar physicist - someone who probably knows more about the subject than you or I.