A Huge Solar Filament Erupts
Filaments sometimes explode off the Sun.
Featured, a huge
filament had been seen hovering over the
Sun's surface for over a week before it erupted late in 2010.
The
image sequence
was taken by the Earth-orbiting
Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) in one color of
ultraviolet light.
The explosion created a
Coronal
Mass Ejection that dispersed high energy plasma into the Solar System.
This plasma cloud, though, missed the Earth and so did not cause
auroras.
The featured eruption
depicted how widely separated areas of the
Sun can sometimes act in unison.
Explosions like this will likely become
less common over the next few years as our Sun goes through a
Solar Minimum in its
surface magnetic activity.