CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. — An eclipse mystery has been solved.
Millions of viewers already got to experience the rare celestial event of the eclipse on Monday, but some more observant viewers could see red dots along the edge of the eclipse without the use of telescopes.
Numerous photographers captured pictures of the dots with varying degrees of resolution. A viewer from Chicago told 5 On Your Side in Cape Girardeau he assumed it was a solar flare.
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5 On Your Side obtained higher-resolution photos from Andy Kastrup at the St. Charles-based ProTronics Technologies, Inc., which show the red dots in their full glory.
In reality, the dots were giant, rarely-seen solar events happening on the sun's surface known as solar prominences.
A solar prominence is a tangled, twisted structure of magnetic field plasma generated by the sun, according to NASA. The structures are anchored to the sun's surface and extend out for hundreds of thousands of miles into space over the course of several months.
Scientists are still researching exactly how and why prominences are formed.
"Although the solar corona has been repeatedly observed during total solar eclipses, and remarked about for thousands of years, the next most common solar feature, the prominence, is much rarer," NASA said on its website.
Prominences are also known to erupt once the structure becomes unstable and bursts plasma outward into space, destroying the structure that was created over the course of months in a matter of hours.
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