Mountains on the sun

17 Jun 2002

The SOHO spacecraft, dedicated to observing the sun and doppler-mapping the rise and fall of material and the passage of vibrations across the sun's face, has detected the presence of extended structures a third of a mile high on the solar surface. Jeffrey Kuhn of Michigan State, speaking at this week's American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, said the bumps persisted in the same place on the surface for a month or more.