Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                               2020 November 2

                          Half Sun with Prominence
                 Image Credit & Copyright: Rainee Colacurcio

   Explanation: What's happening to the Sun? Clearly, the Sun's lower half
   is hidden behind a thick cloud. Averaging over the entire Earth, clouds
   block the Sun about 2/3rds of the time, although much less over many
   land locations. On the Sun's upper right is a prominence of
   magnetically levitating hot gas. The prominence might seem small but it
   could easily envelop our Earth and persist for over a month. The
   featured image is a combination of two exposures, one optimizing the
   cloud and prominence, and the other optimizing the Sun's texture. Both
   were taken about an hour apart with the same camera and from the same
   location in Lynnwood, Washington, USA. The shaggy texture derives from
   the Sun's chromosphere, an atmospheric layer that stands out in the
   specifically exposed color. The uniformity of the texture shows the
   surface to be relatively calm, indicative of a Sun just past the solar
   minimum in its 11-year cycle. In the years ahead, the Sun will progress
   toward a more active epoch where sunspots, prominences, and ultimately
   auroras on Earth will be more common: solar maximum.

                    Tomorrow's picture: waves of gravity
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
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                             & Michigan Tech. U.

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