by It's been a busy few days for our sun, which has produced three of the outbursts that scientists call coronal mass ejections (CMEs) since Monday (Nov. 1).
CMEs shoot globs of gas and magnetic fields out into space, often from sunspots, which are knots in the sun's magnetic field.
On Nov. 1 and Nov. 2, a sunspot designated AR2887 unleashed two of these outbursts.
Then, later in the day on Tuesday (Nov. 2), a second sunspot called AR2891 produced a CME as well.
That third outburst, it turns out, is moving more quickly than its two predecessors, so it swept through all of one previous CME and part of the other, according to monitors at SpaceWeather.com — hence the moniker "cannibal" CME.
Source
CMEs shoot globs of gas and magnetic fields out into space, often from sunspots, which are knots in the sun's magnetic field.
On Nov. 1 and Nov. 2, a sunspot designated AR2887 unleashed two of these outbursts.
Then, later in the day on Tuesday (Nov. 2), a second sunspot called AR2891 produced a CME as well.
That third outburst, it turns out, is moving more quickly than its two predecessors, so it swept through all of one previous CME and part of the other, according to monitors at SpaceWeather.com — hence the moniker "cannibal" CME.
Source
