Monster solar prominence tears away from Sun Eighty times size of Earth

In a spectacular solar event on the night of November 20, a massive “king prominence” tore away from the Sun’s surface. At the time of its detachment, the structure stretched over 1 million kilometres — an astonishing 80 times the diameter of Earth.

According to Caliber.Az, the phenomenon was reported by the Telegram channel of the Solar Astronomy Laboratory at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SRI RAS).

Scientists say they cannot fully explain the event yet. The source of the processes that caused the prominence to break away “is located on the far side of the Sun and hidden from view,” they noted.

The laboratory added that just three days earlier, a massive cloud of plasma had been ejected from roughly the same area of the star, where the prominence’s right “leg” had been anchored.

Predictions suggest that tomorrow this plasma cloud will collide with the object 3I/ATLAS, which lies 230 million kilometres from the Sun.

Researchers at IKI RAN suggested that both the plasma ejection and the prominence’s detachment likely share a common origin on the Sun, linked to sunspot region 4274.

Just last week, this very region produced the two largest solar flares of the year — a 5.1 and an X4.0. Currently, sunspot 4274 remains on the Sun’s far side, hidden from observation.

By Tamilla Hasanova