Filaprom on the Western Limb
Image Credit &
Copyright:
Martin Wise
A solar filament
is an enormous stream of
incandescent plasma suspended above the
active surface of the Sun
by looping magnetic fields.
Seen against the solar disk it looks dark only because it's a little
cooler, and so slightly dimmer, than the
solar photosphere.
Suspended above the solar limb the same structure looks bright
when viewed against the blackness of space
and is called a solar prominence.
A filaprom would be both of course, a stream of magnetized plasma
that crosses in front of the solar disk and
extends beyond the Sun's edge.
In this
hydrogen-alpha
close-up of
the Sun captured on June 22,
active region
AR3038 is near the center of the frame.
Active region AR3032 is seen at the far right, close to the
Sun's western limb.
As AR3032 is carried by
rotation toward
the Sun's visible edge,
what was once a giant filament above it is now partly seen as a prominence,
How big is AR3032's filaprom?
For scale planet Earth is shown near the top right corner.