Spectacular Father's Day Solar Blast

June 20, 2010
Space Weather

Consider it a Father's Day gift ... from the sun. This morning around 1 a.m. UT, magnetic fields on the sun's eastern limb became unstable and erupted, producing one of the most spectacular explosions of the year. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the action:


Click to play a 1.6 MB mpeg movie

The explosion did not cause a solar flare (a flash of electromagnetic radiation) but it did hurl a massive cloud of magnetized plasma into space: SOHO movie. Because of the blast site's location on the eastern limb, the cloud will not hit Earth. There won't be any geomagnetic storms or auroras. Future eruptions, however, could have greater effect.