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Article: Solar prominence heads back to the sun.
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- July 22, 1989
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1989 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Solar prominence heads back to the sun
Many physicists have believed that when solar prominences -- masses of gas suspended over the sun's surface -- leap into space, the ones stretching out by more than about half the sun's 700,000-mile radius either detach and keep going, or else simply disappear. The only solar prominences scientists observe consistently falling back again extend little more than a tenth of a solar radius. But on June 20, an instrument aboard the Solar Maximum Mission satellite took a series of photos showing a prominence that rose nearly 2 million miles, about 2.5 solar radii from the sun's edge, and then headed back down.
Until that ...