Categories: sun

The Sun Burps Out a Gigantic Rolling Wave

Just in time for May Day, the Sun blasted out a coronal mass ejection (CME) from just around the limb earlier today, May 1, 2013. In a gigantic rolling wave, this CME shot out about a billion tons of particles into space, traveling at over a million miles per hour. This CME is not headed toward Earth. The video, taken in extreme ultraviolet light by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), covers about two and a half hours of elapsed time.

Camilla, the rubber chicken mascot for the SDO, said via YouTube that getting this side view shows the power and force behind these solar flares and coronal mass ejections.

This image shows three views of the CME from three different instruments. Left is the SDO image, taken at 02:40 UT. Center is from the SOHO spacecraft, looking through their coronograph instrument. The “mushroom” cloud of plasma leaving the Sun is visible. On the right is the LASCO C2 (red) and C3 (blue) instruments on SOHO, which use a disk to block out the Sun. Visible are the solid occulter disk, used to create a false eclipse; the “pylon”, which is an arm that holds the occulter disk in place; a representation of the Sun in the form of a white disk drawn on the occulter during our image processing and then you can see background stars and the cloud of plasma leaving the Sun.

A coronal mass ejection from the Sun on May 1, 2013. Credit: NASA/SDO
Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/

Recent Posts

New View of Venus Reveals Previously Hidden Impact Craters

Think of the Moon and most people will imagine a barren world pockmarked with craters.…

2 hours ago

Multimode Propulsion Could Revolutionize How We Launch Things to Space

In a few years, as part of the Artemis Program, NASA will send the "first…

12 hours ago

China Trains Next Batch of Taikonauts

China has a fabulously rich history when it comes to space travel and was among…

13 hours ago

NASA Focusses in on Artemis III Landing Sites.

It was 1969 that humans first set foot on the Moon. Back then, the Apollo…

14 hours ago

The Connection Between Black Holes and Dark Energy is Getting Stronger

The discovery of the accelerated expansion of the Universe has often been attributed to the…

16 hours ago

Will Advanced Civilizations Build Habitable Planets or Dyson Spheres

Freeman Dyson proposed that advanced civilizations might eventually harvest all the energy coming from their…

19 hours ago