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Birthday · April 30, 2015

Across the Sun

April 30, 2015

The same gravity that holds galaxies together and keeps planets in their orbits also held you to the Earth on the day you were born.

Across the Sun

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APOD published April 30, 2015. Credit: Göran Strand. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.

Behind the image

Across the Sun

Original APOD · April 30, 2015

A long solar filament stretches across the relatively calm surface of the Sun in this telescopic snap shot from April 27. The negative or inverted narrowband image was made in the light of ionized hydrogen atoms. Seen at the upper left, the magnificent curtain of magnetized plasma towers above surface and actually reaches beyond the Sun's edge. How long is the solar filament? About as long as the distance from Earth to Moon, illustrated by the scale insert at the left. Tracking toward the right across the solar disk a day later the long filament erupted, lifting away from the Sun's surface. Monitored by Sun staring satellites, a coronal mass ejection was also blasted from the site but is expected to swing wide of our fair planet.

Image credit: Göran Strand

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