{"id":68892,"date":"2025-07-17T03:45:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T03:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/68892\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T03:45:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T03:45:11","slug":"colossal-eruption-carves-canyon-of-fire-onto-the-suns-surface","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/68892\/","title":{"rendered":"Colossal Eruption Carves \u2018Canyon of Fire\u2019 Onto the Sun\u2019s Surface"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On July 15, a solar filament erupted from the Sun\u2019s upper left side, ejecting a powerful blast of plasma and magnetic fields into space. The resulting explosion was so massive that it seared a deep, fiery scar of hot plasma and debris onto the star\u2019s visible surface.<\/p>\n<p>While filament eruptions aren\u2019t uncommon, astronomers had already been watching an unusually large filament\u2014cold, dense ribbons of gas suspended above the Sun\u2019s surface\u2014that they spotted days before the explosion. When the filament inevitably collapsed, they had the <a href=\"https:\/\/sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Solar Dynamics Observatory<\/a> at the ready to capture the violent ripple of plasma caused by small instabilities in the Sun\u2019s magnetic field.<\/p>\n<p> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2000630187\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/canyon-of-fire-solar-filament-0716.gif\" alt=\"Canyon Of Fire Solar Filament 0716\" width=\"1024\" height=\"1024\"\/>Yesterday, astronomers caught the explosive collapse of a solar filament on the Sun\u2019s surface. Credit: NASA\/Solar Dynamics Observatory <\/p>\n<p>The resulting explosion carved a gargantuan \u201ccanyon of fire\u201d more than 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) long, with a height of at least 12,400 miles (20,000 km), reported Tony Phillips, an astronomer who manages <a href=\"http:\/\/spaceweather.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Spaceweather.com<\/a>, a site that tracks solar activity and other space weather events.\u00a0\u201cA grand canyon, indeed,\u201d he wrote in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spaceweather.com\/archive.php?view=1&amp;day=15&amp;month=07&amp;year=2025\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">brief update of the event<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>One practical reason astronomers monitor filaments is that eruptions can sometimes cause coronal mass ejection events (CMEs), or intense bursts of plasma and magnetic fields. <a href=\"https:\/\/gizmodo.com\/this-large-and-unstable-sunspot-just-slammed-earth-with-its-strongest-flare-yet-2000617387\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">When CMEs reach Earth<\/a>, they can trigger geomagnetic storms that shock power grids and network systems. For astronauts in space, these storms may <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/science-research\/heliophysics\/what-nasa-is-learning-from-the-biggest-geomagnetic-storm-in-20-years\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">expose them to dangerously high levels of radiation<\/a>, impacting their health.<\/p>\n<p> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2000630188\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/cme-0716.jpg\" alt=\"Cme 0716\" width=\"640\" height=\"639\"  \/>An image of the coronal mass ejection event caused by a solar filament collapse on July 15, 2025. Credit: NASA\/ESA\/Solar and Heliospheric Observatory <\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, follow-up observations by the <a href=\"https:\/\/sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Solar and Heliospheric Observatory<\/a> and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.swpc.noaa.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration<\/a> confirmed that this CME appears to be headed away from Earth. As to how long the filament\u2019s scar will last on the Sun, we\u2019ll just have to see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On July 15, a solar filament erupted from the Sun\u2019s upper left side, ejecting a powerful blast of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":68893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[48716,159,48717,162,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-68892","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-coronal-mass-ejections","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-solar-storm","11":"tag-the-sun","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114866521605330287","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}