4/15/2004: Solar prominence

[paranoid]

Originally posted by Undertoad
Paranoid posted a rebuff to my message which was lost in the corruption problem... I read it this morning before finding the corruption... para, please redo?

Luckily, I still had it in the cache.

Originally posted by Undertoad
It turns out that APOD and I were right in the first place.

It turns out you weren't.

Originally posted by Undertoad
It turns out that what is considered the Sun is a greater area than just what LOOKS like the Sun. The prominence is defined as extending just past the chronosphere. The chronosphere is defined as 10000km out between the photosphere and the corona. The corona is the extension of plasma and radiation well above the sun's actual "sea level".

That what is considered the Sun is a greater volume (not area!) than just what LOOKS like the Sun is correct. Though what is considered the diameter of the Sun (1392000 km) is precisely the diameter of the visible disc (if you dare look at the Sun ). The thickness of photosphere (300 km) and chromosphere (14000 km; not chronosphere - it has nothing to do with time, it's called chromosphere because of the red colour hot hydrogen radiates!) is pretty much irrelevant on that scale.

Please tell, what source defines the prominence as "extending just past the chronosphere (sic!)", because it seems you just invented this definition. And how could the prominence be 300000 km long in that case?

Originally posted by tjennings
Is there a way to ignore the posts of an individual user?

If you'd rather stay an ignorant sheep, just click on the Profile and then "Add paranoid to Your Ignore List".

Originally posted by Elspode
Uh...one of your quotations was mistakenly attributed to me , instead of UT, you incredible twit. Good lord, don't you have any html skills at all? I really think that, if you are going to be quoting people, you need to be absolutely certain that you know what you are doing, or people might think you are an idiot. I mean, they might think you are more of an idiot.

I don't see how forgetting to replace the name in the copied line has anything to do with HTML skills at all. I hope you are joking, though. And I also hope you see the difference between spreading the misconception and making an obvious error in editing the post.

In any case, it appears that the factoid about Earths is a NASA equivalent of the Big Mac - plentiful, but devoid of any real content. Every story about prominences (different ones) that I found contained the same stupid and misleading stock trivia about Earth. Behold:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970127.html
The Earth would easily fit under one of the loops of the prominence shown in the above picture.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040330.html
The Earth would easily fit under the hovering curtain of hot gas.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030223.html
Ten Earths could easily fit in the "claw" of this seemingly solar monster. (note how this one is actually correct - did NASA get a large shipment of clue on that day?)
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030707.html
The Earth would easily fit below the prominence on the left.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000809.html
...the entire Earth could easily fit into its outstretched arms.

As for my personal math skills, they are fine, thank you very much. As is my ability to notice the errors others make. I still stand for my 50-100 estimate, though I agree that it might be 20-150, depending on the location of the prominence relative to the Sun.

P.S. Thanks for the nice words, onetrack!