Magnificient Coronal Mass Ejection On Aug. 31, 2012 #shorts #science #space

On August 31, 2012 a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun's atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 pm EDT.

The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth's magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, with a glancing blow, causing aurora to appear on the night of Monday, September 3.

The images show observations of the CME by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Each one correspond to a different filter (or combination thereof). The different filters sample plasma at different temperatures in the solar corona. #shorts #science #space

Credit:
NASA/SDO