That’s because the chance of both a solar eclipse and a coronal ejection occurring in tandem are slight. However, this alone didn't prove that the drawing on the petroglyph actually showed a coronal mass ejection. If the petroglyph did indeed depict an eclipse, he thought, it could shed light on the special relationship that existed between the Pueblo people and the Sun.īased on calculations of the orbits of the Moon and Earth, Malville notes that a total solar eclipse was visible in the Chaco Canyon area on July 11, 1097, around the height of the area's development. In a study published in 2014 in the journal Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, he set out to prove a connection between what he saw in the rock carving and what the heavens were doing at the time. The corona as seen in November 2012, the last time a coronal mass ejection coincided with a solar eclipse "There's no other kind of rock art object that I know of that has this shape to it." "This pictrograph is unique," Malville says. To Malville, the petroglyph etched into the side of Piedra del Sol was almost certainly a depiction of such a striking celestial event by a Pueblo artist. During a solar eclipse, it is also be possible to see the tendrils of a coronal mass ejection, silhouetted against the sky. When the Sun's light is blocked by the Moon moving in front it during a solar eclipse, it becomes possible to see the corona is brightly snaking out from the edges of the shadow where the Sun once shone. However, there is one time when the corona becomes starkly visible. The Sun’s corona is bright, but far dimmer than the surface of the star, meaning it's usually invisible to the naked eye. This plasma is vaulted away from the Sun in an arc that appears to rise up and snap, launching charged gas at speeds of hundreds of miles per second. A coronal mass ejection is essentially what it sounds like: a large ejection of plasma from the Sun's corona into space, usually caused by a solar flare or other outburst from the Sun's surface. This charged layer of gas extends thousands of miles into space above the Sun’s surface. The Sun's corona is the super-hot aura of plasma that surrounds our star like a crown or halo. What made that petroglyph, or rock drawing, so beautiful to Malville was its striking resemblance to a phenomenon he had grown quite familiar with in his work as a solar astronomer before he turned to archaeology: a coronal mass ejection. "I joked that only a solar astronomer could find that beautiful," says Malville, who is now retired. "It was covered in a number of petroglyphs," Malville recalls, "one of which was this very strange circular dot with hairs coming out the edge of it. One of his students noticed something unusual carved into the surface of the rock. In 1992, archaeoastronomer Kim Malville was helping lead an expedition of archaeology students in the Chaco Canyon area of New Mexico, once a metropolis of Pueblo society replete with intricately built stone houses.
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