Circular Coronal Mass Ejection (2010.06.05) [720p]

An almost perfectly circular coronal mass ejection (CME) blew out from the Sun as seen in this video clip covering 36 hours (June 5-6, 2010). It maintained its shape for many hours. Many scientists believe that such CME shapes represent huge loops of magnetic field. CME's are large solar storms that eject over a billion tons of matter at millions of miles per hour. SOHO captured the action with its C2 coronagraph, in which the sun is blocked out (by the circular occulting disk in the center of the image) to reveal the faint structures in the corona. The white circle represents the size of the Sun.

credit: NASA/ESA