After the laughing sun, comes the solar serpent. Observing the Sun permanently is revealing some surprises…
the probe solar orbiter of the THIS has captured a spectacular sun serpent hundreds of thousands of kilometers, several times larger than Earth, which has slid across the entire sun surface.
The sun serpent was seen on September 5, 2022, when the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter (THIS) was approaching Sun for a close pass that took place on October 12.
Of course, no living thing can live on the Sun. There the temperature reaches million degrees Celsius. Our eyes interpret it as a kind of serpent or asian dragon that we see in anime movies, but it’s just an illusion.
It reminded us of the smiling Sun, a spectacular optical effect that actually reflected a worrying solar storm.
The solar serpent that travels the Sun
What we are going to see in the next video is completely different. It seems like a sun serpent of hundreds of thousands of kilometers longwhich covers almost the entire surface of the Sunfrom the center to the northwest corner.
The optical effect is spectacular, but it only lasts a couple of seconds, so don’t blink an eye on this video, because you might miss it:
What have we seen? It looks like an oversized ghost snake. It must be said that what is shown is a time lapse accelerated. In real time the sun serpent it took him three hours to complete his journey.
But do not forget that the Sun has a circumference of more than 4.3 million kilometers, so that three-hour journey was carried out at a speed of 612,000 km/h.
As explained by ESA in its releaseis sun serpent it’s actually a plasma tube that meanders through the sun’s magnetic field.
Plasma is a state of matter in which a gas is so hot that its atoms begin to lose electrons. This loss causes the gas to become electrically charged, and it can be affected by magnetic fields.All gas in the Sun’s atmosphere is a plasma.due to high temperatures.
The plasma in the snake is following a particularly long filament of the Sun’s magnetic field, which runs almost all the way through it.
What makes the snake so intriguing is that it started from an active solar region that subsequently erupted, spewing billions of tons of plasma into space. This raises the possibility that the snake was a kind of precursor of this eruption.
Solar Orbiter is an international collaborative space mission between ESA and NASA, operated by ESA. It launched on February 10, 2020, and earlier this month celebrated its 1,000th day in space.
The sun serpent that slides by the surface of the sun is, therefore, a plasma tube that moves due to sun’s magnetic field. Visually it impresses us, but for scientists the brutal sun flare what came next