NASA Scientist: Has Never Seen the Sun Release Material Like This Before

Solar Flare Erupts, Creating Spectacular Images

Published June 08, 2011

| FoxNews.com

AP/NASA

June 7: This image provided by NASA shows the Sun unleashing a medium-sized solar flare, a minor radiation storm and a spectacular coronal mass ejection.

Great balls of fire!

A solar blast that NASA classified as an M-2 explosion has erupted from the sun in an impressive display captured by the space agency's cameras. In the amazing blast, a large cloud of charged magnetic particles mushroomed up out of the sun and fell back down, appearing to cover almost half of the solar surface.

Scientists said that the event won't have a significant impact on Earth, although it will deliver a "glancing blow" to the planet's magnetic field late June 8 or June 9, NASA said. 

Images were recorded by the orbiting satellite called the Solar Dynamics Observatory.

But it's not expected to cause a major impact here. The National Weather Service is predicting minor effects on satellites and weak impacts on some power grids.

The eruption was somewhat unique because at many places there seem to be even cooler material -- at temperatures less than 80,000 K.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/06/08/solar-flare-erupts-creating-spectacular-images/#ixzz1OrRJuOVI

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by thesuntoday on Jun 9, 2011

http://www.thesuntoday.org - The solar eruption of June 7, 2011 sparked a huge amount of media interest. This is just the beginning as more events happen as we approach solar maximum around 2013-2014. Here is an interview I gave with Alex DeMetrick from WJZ Balitmore.

This link to the original web article as
http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2011/06/08/solar-flare-erupts-creating-spectacu...

credit: SOHO, SDO, WJZ CBS Baltimore

Brought to you by The Sun Today

also by thesuntoday on Jun 7, 2011

http://www.thesuntoday.org - I woke up to this event, aptly described in an email from a colleague - "Never seen anything like this before - spectacular". It really is just amazing! Here are videos of a prominence eruption from 304, 171 and 211 Angstrom channel cameras on SDO. Also included is a video from the LASCO C2 coronagraph aboard the SOHO spacecraft. This event produced M2.5 x-ray solar flare and a moderate proton storm. There are no major concerns for space weather.

credit: SOHO, SDO, http://www.helioviewer.org

Brought to you by The Sun Today.