Watch the Rise and Fall of a Towering Inferno on the Sun
A solar prominence imaged on May 27, 2014. Earth and Moon are shown to scale at the bottom. (NASA/SDO)
Caught on camera by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, a prominence blazes hundreds of thousands of miles out from the Sun’s surface (i.e., photosphere) on May 27, 2014. The image above, seen in extreme ultraviolet wavelengths, shows a brief snapshot of the event with the column of solar plasma stretching nearly as far as the distance between Earth and the Moon.
Watch a video of the event below:
The video covers a span of about two hours.
Although it might look fiery in these images, a prominence isn’t flame — it’s powered by rising magnetic fields trapping and carrying the Sun’s superheated material up into the corona. And while this may not have been a unique or unusual event — or even particularly long-lived — it’s still an impressive reminder of the immense scale and energy of our home star!
Credit: NASA/SDO
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