- Solar prominence, dense cloud of incandescent ionized gas projecting from the Sun’s chromosphere into the corona. Prominences sometimes extend hundreds of thousands of kilometers above the Sun’s chromosphere.
- Solar prominences are formed due to the Sun’s
magnetic field. In solar prominence, matter resides in the form of hot ionized gases and these substances are attached to the magnetic field of the Sun. Since these gases came from
deeper layers of the solar atmosphere, they are cooler and therefore denser than the
coronal gas. that's why Solar prominences appear as bright structures.
- When viewed against the photosphere (solar disk), prominences appear as
dark snake like objects, called filament. A prominence, referred to as a filament when viewed against the solar disk, is a large, bright, gaseous feature extending outward from the Sun's surface, often in a loop shape. Prominences are anchored to the Sun's surface in the photosphere, and extend outwards into the solar corona. While the corona consists of extremely hot ionized gases, known as plasma, which do not emit much visible light, prominences contain much cooler plasma, similar in composition to that of the chromosphere. The prominence plasma is typically a hundred times more luminous and dense than the coronal plasma.
- Solar prominence takes approximately one time to form and they stay in corona for many days, And they can cover distances up to thousands of kilometers in space.
- Some prominences break apart and may then give rise to coronal mass ejections. Some prominences are so powerful that they throw out matter from the Sun into space at speeds ranging from 600 km/s to more than 1000 km/s.
