A solar prominence is a large, bright feature extending out from the Sun's surface into the chromosphere and the corona.
Prominences can be formed in about a day and can persist in the corona for several weeks or months. They can extend hundreds of thousands of kilometers into space.
Solar prominences are also known as filaments when viewed against the solar disk.
SUNSPOTS
Sunspots are regions of reduced temperature along the Sun's surface caused by high concentrations of magnetic flux which inhibit the natural convection within the Sun.
They appear as black spots on the surface.
Sunspots appear within active regions of the Sun, typically in pairs of opposite magnetic polarity. They can last anywhere between a few days to a few months.
The diameter of a sunspot can be between 16km to 160,000km and can vary as they travel across the surface.
SPICULES
Spicules are dynamic jets of plasma which extend into the Sun's chromosphere.
They appear as dark "hairs" above the Sun's surface.
Around 300 km in diameter, they can move away from the surface at speeds between 15 and 110 km/s.
Despite lasting only minutes, there are about 3,000,000 active spicules at any time on the Sun's chromosphere.
PLAGES
Plages are bright patches in the Sun's chromosphere surrounding sunspots and are the extensions of faculae.
Faculae are bright patches on the Sun's surface which have a slightly different temperature than the surrounding photosphere.
Although a sunspot will always have a surrounding facula, they can appear separate from sunspots as well.
Faculae become plages when they extend into the chromosphere.
They have high emittions in the hydrogen and ionized calcium vapour wavelengths, which allows our telescope to observe them.