Science TheFOXposts.com

A gigantic plume of plasma recently exploded from the sun's south pole, where solar erupt ions almost never occur. The explosion, which a photographer captured in stunning detail, is another telltale sign that the sun is about to enter its most active phase — the solar maximum .  The rare phenomenon occurred on Feb. 17, when a solar flare exploded from a sunspot near the sun's south pole, releasing a gigantic column of ionized gas, or plasma, that towered around 124,300 miles (200,000 kilometers) above the solar surface — around 15 times taller than Earth, Spaceweather.com reported . The plasma eventually snapped away from the sun and hurtled into space as a gigantic cloud, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME).   Astrophotographer Eduardo Schaberger Poupeau captured a highly detailed composite image of the plume before it broke away from the solar surface. "The plasma column was so large, I had to rotate the camera to fit it into the frame," Poupeau t...

Hawaii tourism officials are urging tourists to be respectful when flocking to a national park on the Big Island to get a glimpse of the latest eruption of Kilauea HONOLULU -- Hawaii tourism officials urged tourists to be respectful of cultural and spiritual meanings when flocking to a national park on the Big Island to get a glimpse of the latest eruption of Kilauea, one of the world's most active volcanoes. Kilauea, Hawaii’s second-largest volcano, began erupting Wednesday after a three-month pause. Word of its lava fountains spread quickly, bringing crowds to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. The U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory on Thursday lowered Kilauea’s alert level from warning to watch because lava flow declined and no infrastructure is threatened. The eruption activity is confined to the closed area of the park. “Out of respect for the cultural and spiritual significance of a volcanic eruption and the crater area for many kamaʻāina, the Hawaiʻi Touris...