Solar flares are sudden eruptions on our Sun’s surface
Sun’s eruptions
- eruptions could flare up in just few minutes, then take more than half hour to die away.
- Sun’s flares reach temperature of 10 million degrees and have he energy of billions of nuclear explosions.
- Sun’s flares send out heat and radiation – also streams of charged particles.
- `Solar Wind` is the stream of charged particles that shoots out from our Sun in all directions at speeds of over one million miles per hour.
- taking around three days to reach Earth from the Sun, but still blows far throughout our Solar System.
- every second – Solar Wind carries away over one million tonnes of charged particles from our Sun.
- Our Earth is shield from the lethal effects of the Solar Wind by its magnetic field.
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Solar prominences
- solar prominences are giant arcs of hot hydrogen (gas) that sometimes spout out from our Sun.
- solar prominences reach temperatures of 10,000 degrees.
- Coronal mass ejections are giant eruptions of charged particles from our Sun – creating gusts in the Solar Wind that set off magnetic storms on Earth.
Solar Wind
- magnetic storms are massive hails of charged particles that hit earth every few years to set up the atmosphere buzzing with electricity.
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