How are sunspots related to prominences and solar flares?
How are prominences and sunspots related? Sunspots are the lowest visible part of the magnetic disturbance and prominences are the higher arches. What happens as the bases of magnetic field loops are twisted? The loops reconnect and release energy into the upper atmosphere.
What is the main difference between a solar flare and a prominence?
A prominence is anchored to the Sun’s surface, unlike a flare, and is often characterized by a loop shape. A prominence is bound by the Sun’s magnetic field and can last for months.
Is a solar prominence a solar flare?
Such violent events are called solar flares. Solar prominences are typically observed to be high loops of hot ionized gases which follow the geometry of the magnetic fields associated with pairs of sunspots.
How are sunspots related to solar flares quizlet?
How are sunspots related to solar flares? A solar flare releases the energy stored in a sunspot’s magnetic field. Describe 2 examples of how solar activity can affect people on Earth. 1 – Coronal mass ejections can cause geomagnetic storms.
What is the cause of sunspots flares and prominences?
What is the common cause of sunspots, flares, and prominences? The helium produced from the fusion of hydrogen has less mass than the hydrogen that goes into its formation.
What are solar prominences?
A solar prominence (also known as a filament when viewed against the solar disk) is a large, bright feature extending outward from the Sun’s surface. Prominences are anchored to the Sun’s surface in the photosphere, and extend outwards into the Sun’s hot outer atmosphere, called the corona.
What is the common cause of sunspots flares and prominences?
Solar flares are a sudden explosion of energy caused by tangling, crossing or reorganizing of magnetic field lines near sunspots. The surface of the Sun is a very busy place. It has electrically charged gases that generate areas of powerful magnetic forces. These areas are called magnetic fields.
What is a possible cause of solar prominences?
solar prominence, dense cloud of incandescent ionized gas projecting from the Sun’s chromosphere into the corona. Prominences sometimes extend hundreds of thousands of kilometres above the Sun’s chromosphere. Their causes are uncertain but probably involve magnetic forces.
What causes sunspots on the Sun?
Sunspots are caused by disturbances in the Sun’s magnetic field welling up to the photosphere, the Sun’s visible “surface”. The powerful magnetic fields in the vicinity of sunspots produce active regions on the Sun, which in turn frequently spawn disturbances such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
How are solar flares different from sunspots?
Sunspots are areas that appear dark on the surface of the Sun. They appear dark because they are cooler than other parts of the Sun’s surface. Solar flares are a sudden explosion of energy caused by tangling, crossing or reorganizing of magnetic field lines near sunspots.
What is the difference between a sunspot and a solar flare?
Describe the differences between sunspots and solar flares. Sunspots are dark areas on the surface of the Sun that are cooler than surrounding areas. They appear in groups, vary in size, and cycle in number over an 11-year period. Solar flares are sudden eruptions of energy from a small area of the Sun’s surface.
Are sunspots caused by solar flares?
Sunspots are storms on the sun’s surface that are marked by intense magnetic activity and play host to solar flares and hot gassy ejections from the sun’s corona. Scientists believe that the number…
How are solar flares different from prominences?
So basically, flares actually get out of the Sun. Prominences, meanwhile, are largely self-contained by the Sun’s own magnetic field. Filaments are just prominences. There is no fundamental difference between the two – that is merely an artifact of our Earth-based observing angle.