NASA has shared an image capturing the sun in the midst of a solar flare.
“Sunny, thank you for the sunshine bouquet,” reads the caption of the image shared to Instagram. “The largest object in our solar system – our Sun – keeps objects large and small in their orbit, affecting everything from planets to dust with its immense size and magnetic presence.”
The caption continues, “The Sun’s atmosphere, or corona, is a dynamic place where large explosions like solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CME) occur. The near-Earth Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this CME in September 2012, which traveled over 900 miles per second (1,448 kilometers per second), causing an aurora to appear. Image description: Swirling solar activity appears in shades of orange and yellow, with a large jet of orange and red from the bottom left of the image. The surface of the Sun is marked with yellow fissures encroaching on the blackness of space.”
What is a coronal mass ejection (CME)?
According to NASA, “Coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, are large clouds of solar plasma and embedded magnetic fields released into space after a solar eruption. CMEs expand as they sweep through space, often measuring millions of miles across, and can collide with planetary magnetic fields. When directed at Earth, a CME can produce geomagnetic disturbances that ignite bright aurora, short-circuit satellites and power grids on Earth, or at their worst, even endanger astronauts in orbit.”
Simply put, solar flares arebright flashes of light that suddenly appear on the surface of the sun. They usually last for a few minutes.
Explaining what the source of the solar flare is, NASA says, “The Sun’s dynamic upper atmosphere is called the corona. It is filled with plasma, whose movements are governed by the tangle of magnetic fields surrounding the Sun. Temperatures in the corona can reach up to millions of degrees. The corona is the source of the solar wind as well as solar flares and coronal mass ejections – the energetic solar eruptions that create the strongest space weather.”