Tall, vertical streams of gas, called spicules, are like huge fiery geysers shooting up into the Sun’s chromosphere and then disappearing.
Spicules are usually associated with regions of high magnetic flux.
They rise about 6,000 miles, or 10,000 km and last between 5 and 15 minutes.
Spicules were discovered in 1877 by Father Angelo Secchi of the Vatican Observatory in Rome.
There are around 60,000 to 70,000 active spicules on the Sun at any given time.
It is hypothesized that spicules are a result of p-mode oscillations in the Sun’s surface that causes the Sun’s surface to rise and fall at several hundred meters per second.
