Rain on the Sun? Yes, but it's not water - it's plasma! This happens after an eruption on the Sun produces both a Coronal Mass Ejection and a moderate solar flare at the same time - then plasma in the nearby solar corona cools and falls back down. We call this coronal rain. Because they are electrically charged, electrons, protons, and ions in the rain were channeled along existing magnetic loops near the Sun's surface, making the scene appear as a three-dimensional sourceless waterfall. Shown in ultraviolet light, it highlights matter glowing at a temperature of about 50,000 Kelvin. Each second in the featured time lapse video takes about 6 minutes in real time, so that the entire coronal rain sequence lasted about 10 hours. Recent observations have confirmed that that coronal rain can also occur in smaller loops for as long as 30 hours. Credit: NASA Goddard/Solar Obervatory ___________ #nasaearth #nasasocial #nasajpl #nasa #solarobservatory #thesun #coronalrain #JPL #astronomy #astrophotography #astronomyphotography #astronomypictureoftheday #nasagoddardspaceflightcenter #nasagoddard (at Baltimore, Maryland)













