Solar Prominences

Prominences occur above the photosphere of the Sun and may reach high into the corona. They occur either as graceful loops that may hang suspended for many days called quiescent prominences, or as more violent eruptive prominences that surge up from the surface on much shorter time scales.

The right image shows an eruptive prominence recorded by SOHO on June 14, 1999. South is up in this image, which is recorded in the extreme UV part of the spectrum in the light of ionized helium atoms. Eruptive prominences can reach heights of 1 million kilometers above the photosphere with velocities as high as 1300 km/s.