Giant Solar Tadpoles Born in Explosion

Solar tadpoles swim back to the Sun during the April 21, 2002 coronal mass ejection imaged by NASA's TRACE spacecraft.

Dark features resembling Earth-sized tadpoles were seen swimming in the atmosphere of the Sun after it was heated to millions of degrees following an enormous explosion, according to scientists who made the observation using NASA's Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) spacecraft.

"This is the best view yet of these enigmatic shapes," said Dr. Edward Deluca of the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), Cambridge, Mass., who is a co-author of a paper on the observation to be submitted to the Astrophysical Journal in September 2003. The observation is expected to shed light on the physics of magnetic reconnection, the process believed to power solar explosions, which occasionally disrupt satellites and power systems. The result is presented today as a poster at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Nice, France.

The explosion on April 21, 2002, was an "X-class" solar flare, the most powerful kind, releasing about as much energy as a billion one-megaton nuclear bombs. It was also associated with a coronal mass ejection (CME), a multi-billion ton eruption of electrified gas (plasma) into space.

For the complete article on the powerful solar flare, go to: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2003/0411tadpoles.html