Yesterday morning (June 7th) around 06:41 UT, magnetic fields above sunspot complex 1226-1227 became unstable and erupted. The blast produced an M2-class solar flare, an S1-class radiation storm, and a massive CME. A recording of the blast from NASA’s solar Dynamics Observatory ranks as one of the most beautiful and dramatic movies of the SDO era. This video of the massive solar flare and ensuing solar prominence should reveal all.
“I’ve never seen material released like this before, such a huge amount that falls back down in such a spectacular way,” says Goddard Spaceflight Center’s Dr. C. Alex Young in the first video below, in which he does a thorough job of explaining exactly what you’re looking at. “It looks like someone just kicked a giant clod of dirt into the air and it fell back down.”
Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy reckons that something like a billion tons of material was thrown off the sun before collapsing magnificently back to the surface. This wasn’t the most colossal flare we’ve ever witnessed, or even the most powerful one we’ve seen this year (it ranked as an M2.5, or medium-sized flare, in terms of energy). But the view, courtesy of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, is spectacular.
And here’s a close-up of the prominence:
And here’s the lead up to this coronal mass ejection:
Aurora Alert
High-latitude sky watchers in both hemispheres should be alert for auroras during the late hours of June 8th or 9th when a CME from yesterday’s eruption could deliver a glancing blow to Earth’s magnetic field.
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