Last week, the Sun barfed out an enormous jet of plasma that extended eight million miles into space like some kind of epic stellar flamethrower.
The event, known as a solar prominence, went down between April 28 and April 29. Fortunately for everyone, astronomers caught the whole thing on camera using NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and the joint ESA/NASA satellite ESA/NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).
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The below video, compiled by astronomer Karl Battams, shows the colossal eruption from the perspective of both spacecraft, across many wavelengths, distances, and angles.
Solar prominence eruption, April 28-29, 2015.
This dramatic prominence was caused by a buildup of cooler solar material, suspended above the Sun’s surface by its intense magnetic field. Eventually, a tipping point was reached that blasted out a coronal mass ejection (CME)—basically, a fancy word for a violent eruption of gas and plasma sculpted by the Sun’s gravity and magnetism.
According to Battams, these ejections aren’t usually dangerous, and anyway, this one was pointed away from the Earth.
Still, it’s both inspiring and unsettling to watch the Sun spew out its contents over these genuinely astronomical distances. As the below scale model of a CME indicates, these stellar hiccups would engulf our planet thousands of times over.
Scale model of solar prominence, Jupiter, and Earth. Image: NASA Goddard Flight Center
Fortunately, we’re far away enough to avoid direct tangles with these scary solar lassos, but with the help of satellites like SDO and SOHO, we can at least enjoy the light show.
