Coronal mass ejections see millions of tons of material blasted out into space—the making of beautiful auroras around our polar regions if we're in the line of fire. Sometimes powerful magnetic field lines prevent the material from escaping, and draw it back into the Sun's surface—usually at a sunspot. They're so huge they would dwarf our entire planet, and they're magnificent.
But now and then, along comes an eruption that just leaves you in awe...
This huge explosion actually happened back in July 2012, but NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Centre only released the video this week. It covers 9.5 hours, sped up to 3.5 minutes of gorgeous, lingering golden rain...
I'll let NASA describe it:
A moderately powerful solar flare exploded on the sun's lower right hand limb, sending out light and radiation. Next came a CME, which shot off to the right out into space. And then, the sun treated viewers to one of its dazzling magnetic displays—a phenomenon known as coronal rain.
Over the course of the next day, hot plasma in the corona cooled and condensed along strong magnetic fields in the region. Magnetic fields, themselves, are invisible, but the charged plasma is forced to move along the lines, showing up brightly in the extreme ultraviolet wavelength of 304 Angstroms, which highlights material at a temperature of about 50,000 Kelvin. This plasma acts as a tracer, helping scientists watch the dance of magnetic fields on the sun, outlining the fields as it slowly falls back to the solar surface.
The footage in this video was collected by the Solar Dynamics Observatory's AIA instrument. SDO collected one frame every 12 seconds, and the movie plays at 30 frames per second, so each second in this video corresponds to six minutes of real time.
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