Solar Prominence by Hinode Solar prominence is cool gas floating in the solar atmosphere. Prominence material is denser than surrounding coronal plasma, but it is sometimes suspended in the corona for a long time. Coronal magnetic fields could act like a hammock, supporting the prominence material. Gas in the prominence moves up and down, showing the waves are propagating along magnetic field lines. It is thought that this wave may carry energy from the photosphere to the corona and that the ene

On Oct. 24-25, our Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite watched as a solar prominence rose up above the Sun’s surface, twisted around, then became elongated and broke away from the Sun. Prominences are relatively cool clouds of solar material (called plasma) that are tethered above the Sun’s surface by magnetic forces. Although tiny on the scale of the Sun, this prominence stretched out about ten times the diameter of Earth — see Earth inset for scale. These images were taken in a wavelength of