NASA SDO: Solar Filament Eruption Creates 'Canyon of Fire'

A magnetic filament of solar material erupted on the sun in late September, breaking the quiet conditions in a spectacular fashion. 

The 200,000 mile long filament ripped through the sun's atmosphere, the corona, leaving behind what looks like a canyon of fire. 

The glowing canyon traces the channel where magnetic fields held the filament aloft before the explosion. 

In reality, the sun is not made of fire, but of something called plasma: particles so hot that their electrons have boiled off, creating a charged gas that is interwoven with magnetic fields.

These images were captured on Sept. 29-30, 2013, by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, which constantly observes the sun in a variety of wavelengths.

Different wavelengths help capture different aspect of events in the corona. The red images shown in the movie help highlight plasma at temperatures of 90,000° F and are good for observing filaments as they form and erupt. 

The yellow images, showing temperatures at 1,000,000° F, are useful for observing material coursing along the sun's magnetic field lines, seen in the movie as an arcade of loops across the area of the eruption.

The browner images at the beginning of the movie show material at temperatures of 1,800,000° F, and it is here where the canyon of fire imagery is most obvious.

By comparing this with the other colours, one sees that the two swirling ribbons moving farther away from each other are, in fact, the footprints of the giant magnetic field loops, which are growing and expanding as the filament pulls them upward.

Image Credit: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory

Bolivia Creates Space Agency To Manage Satellite Program

Bolivian President Evo Morales has signed a decree establishing a national space agency to oversee a satellite project scheduled to be completed by 2013, the Latin American Herald Tribune said.
The document, signed by the Bolivian president on Wednesday, stipulates that the Bolivian Space Agency "will promote technology transfer, human-resource development and the application of satellite-communications programs to education, defense, medicine and meteorology."

The new government body will also manage the implementation of the Tupac Katari satellite project, named after the leader of an Indian rebellion against the Spanish colony in the 18th century.

The agency will have an initial budget of $1 million and will be financed through government funding, donations and foreign loans, the Latin American Herald Tribune said, citing the country's Public Works Minister Walter Delgadillo Terceros.

According to the Latin American Herald Tribune, technical experts from China and Bolivia met in January to assess Bolivia's telecommunications capabilities and to start preliminary work on the design of the Tupac Katari, which will be built on the basis of the Chinese DFH-4 satellite.

The first Bolivian satellite is expected to be put into orbit in 2013.