NASA Spacecraft Catches a Massive Solar Eruption on Video

NASA periodically catches video of solar flares shooting out of the sun, but this wave of hot plasma ripping across the sun’s surface to create a solar storm is unimaginably huge. If you look closely at the video, the 372,823-mile dark plasma filament (long enough to wrap around the Earth 47 times) erupts and lets out a wave that covers a good distance of the top half of the sun. For reference, the moon is about 238,000 miles from Earth; so while the eruption looks small with the sun shrunken down to fit on your computer screen, it happened on a mind-bogglingly large scale. According to SpaceWeather.com, the charged particles in the coronal mass ejection will just glance the Earth as they pass by tomorrow, and they’ll probably produce some eye-pleasing aurorae. Keep your eyes peeled for more beautiful pictures and Vines from the ISS astronauts tomorrow. (via blastr, image Courtesy of NASA/SDO and the AIA, EVE, and HMI science teams) Previously in space

• A video of Pluto and its moon as New Horizons appraoche
• Rosetta became the first spacecraft to orbit a comet and is sending back awesome pictures
• The James Webb Space Telescope will help us look for aliens, and it’s coming together

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