Watch this Video of the Sun Being Awesome
This video is of three simultaneous eruptive events on the sun. On July 19, 2012, the sun experienced a “moderately powerful” solar flare, a coronal mass ejection (CME), and a phenomenon called coronal rain. The footage occurred over the course of a day, so what looks like slow-motion is actually sped up quite a bit.
Here’s how NASA explains the event:
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.
Science. Is. Awesome.
Dacia Mitchell | Managing Editor
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Filed Under: awesome, coronal mass ejection, coronal rain, magnetic fields, NASA, plasma, plasma rain, science, solar flare, space, sun, video
AWESOMENESSS!!!!!! I love how it was dripping back down to the Sun’s surface even as it was growing. It’s even more amazing when you realize that the entire solar flare, which is only happening on a small patch of the Sun, could’ve engulfed the entire Earth multiple times over. Wow…such natural terrible beauty.
Speechless. Dacia, you’re absolutely right – science (and the amazing universe we live in) truly is awesome.