Page 35 - Curriculum Visions Dynamic Book

 A large prominence shooting out near the lower left of the Sun.
corona (pl. coronae) The gases surrounding a star such as the Sun. In the case of the Sun and certain other stars these gases are extremely hot.
coronal mass ejections Very large bubbles of plasma escaping into the corona.
ionized Matter that has been converted into small charged particles called ions.
magnetic field The region of influence of a magnetic body.
magnetism An invisible force that has the property of attracting iron and similar metals.
plasma A collection of charged particles that behaves something like a gas. It can conduct an electric charge and be affected by magnetic fields.
spicules Jets of relatively cool gas that move upward through the chromosphere into the corona.
There is a cyclic pattern in the activity of solar prominences, just as there is for sunspots and flares. They rise to a maximum and then subside again over an 11-year cycle.
Spicules
Magnetism is responsible for most phenomena in the chromosphere. Magnetic fields influence the direction of upward-moving jets of gas that reach up from the photosphere and into the chromosphere. These jets of ionized gas are called spicules, and they rise about 7,000 km from the photosphere. They are the main sources of the ionized gas that makes up the corona (see below).
About 100,000 spicules are sending up material at 20 km a second at any given moment. Any individual spicule has a life of just a few minutes. It then dies and is replaced by another one that leaves the surface at a slightly different position.
The corona
Beyond the chromosphere lies the very, very thin atmosphere called the corona. The dim halo of the corona reaches beyond the planets and eventually extends to the edges of the Solar System. We are within the Sun’s corona.
The individual particles in the corona are extremely hot, mostly at a million degrees near the Sun and still 200,000°C when they spread out into the region of space around the Earth. However, they also are very scarce, for the corona is the region that we know as space, and space has virtually nothing in it. As a result, to a person in space the corona feels very cold.
Coronal mass ejections are huge magnetic bubbles of plasma that erupt from the Sun’s corona and travel through space at high speed (for pictures see pages 4, 22–23, and 44). Coronal loops are also found arcing far into the corona (see pages 36–37).
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