Tuesday 15 November 2022 09:23 PM Moment a 'snake' slithers across the sun's surface at 380,000 MPH is captured ... trends now
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The moment a 'snake' appears to slither across the surface of the sun at speeds of 380,000 miles per hour has been captured by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Solar Orbiter.
The feature is a 'tube' of cool atmospheric gasses making its way through the sun's magnetic field and while the video shows it zipping across, it actually took three hours to travel from one side to the other.
What makes the 'snake' so intriguing is that it began from a solar active region that later erupted, ejecting billions of tons of plasma into space.
The event suggests that the feature could be used as a warning sign for future explosions on the sun because the Solar Orbiter identified it with several instruments.
The 'snake' was seen moving from the bottom right of the sun to the top left. It is actually a 'tube' of cool atmospheric gasses making its way through the sun's magnetic field
The tube was spotted on September 5, as the craft was inching closer to the sun - the feature can be seen moving from the bottom right of the sun, up toward the top left.
Plasma is one of the four fundamental states of matter in which a gas is so hot that its atoms begin to lose some of their outer particles, called electrons.
This loss makes the gas electrically charged and therefore susceptible to magnetic fields. All gas in the Sun's atmosphere is plasma because
