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Spicules: Jets on the Sun
Credit: SST, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, LMSAL
Imagine a pipe as wide as a state and as long as half the
Earth. Now imagine
that this pipe is filled with hot gas moving 50,000
kilometers per hour. Further
imagine that this pipe is not made of metal but a
transparent magnetic field.
You are envisioning just one of thousands of young
spicules on the active Sun.
Pictured above is perhaps the highest resolution
image yet of these enigmatic
solar flux tubes. Spicules dot the above frame of
solar active region 10380 that crossed
the Sun in June, but are particularly
evident as a carpet of dark tubes on the right.
Time-sequenced images have
recently shown that spicules last about five
minutes, starting out as tall tubes
of rapidly rising gas but eventually fading
as the gas peaks and falls back down
to the Sun. These images also indicate,
for the first time, that the ultimate
cause of spicules is sound-like waves
that flow over the Sun's surface but leak
into the Sun's atmosphere.
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