NASA reports massive hole in Sun’s atmosphere

Huge hole over 400,000 miles long (700,000 kilometers) is 55 times wider than the Earth

 

A wide hole in the sun’s atmosphere is facing Earth and spewing a stream of solar wind toward our planet. Estimated time of arrival: April 9th. In this extreme ultraviolet image from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, we see not only the hole, but also a bushy filament of magnetic bordering the hole’s leading edge:

Such filaments are often unstable. If this one erupts while it is facing Earth, it could hurl a CME in our direction, adding to the effect of the incoming solar wind.

The canyon-shaped hole is remarkably wide, stretching more than 700,000 km from end to end. As a result, Earth could be under the influence of its gaseous emissions for days.

Via NASA Spaceweather

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By Anthony Watts

I’m a former AMS certified (Seal 676 retired) television meteorologist who spent 25 years on the air and who also operates a weather technology and content business, as well as continues daily forecasting on radio, just for fun.

Weather measurement and weather presentation technology is my specialty. I also provide weather stations and custom weather monitoring solutions via www.weathershop.com (if you like my work, please consider buying a weather gadget there, StormPredator for example) and www.tempelert.com, and turn key weather channels with advertising at www.viziframe.com

The weather graphics you see in the lower right corner of the blog are produced by my company, IntelliWeather. As you can see most of my work is in weather technology such as weather stations,  weather data processing systems, and weather graphics creation and display.  While I’m not a degreed climate scientist, I’ll point out that neither is Al Gore, and his specialty is presentation also. And that’s part of what this blog is about: presentation of weather and climate data in a form the public can understand and discuss.

I’m also hearing impaired, with about an 85% sensory-neural hearing loss I’ve had since my early teens (11) due to an ototoxic drug reaction. Basically I’m totally deaf above about 2 kilohertz, with significant losses in the remaining frequencies. I wear powerful microprocessor based CIC hearing aids in each ear, which corrects my hearing up to about 30% of normal for the remainder. This hearing handicap forced many decisions in my life for me, including becoming a TV broadcaster when the opportunity presented itself. Why? Because in TV and radio I didn’t have the embarrassing problem of trying to hear people, I only had to talk. Blogging of course is natural for me, since it allows me to “broadcast” but also to interact without needing to hear. For more on hearing loss, see the Starkey Hearing Foundation, which I support.

See more about hearing loss and my story here

(Source: wattsupwiththat.com; April 6, 2018; http://tinyurl.com/ybwk4yeh)
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