Bad Astronomy

The Sun decided to blow off a little steam today. Twice.

Today, the Sun had two relatively minor – but quite cool-looking – events. One was a prominence eruption, where a loop of ionized gas is lifted from the Sun’s surface and is ejected into space, and the other an M1 class flare on the Sun’s edge. Neither will affect us here on Earth, but are interesting to watch.

Camilla Corona SDO – the Solar Dynamics Observatory’s unofficial official mascot – posted a nice video of the two eruptions:

The sunspot region that blew off that small flare is on the edge of the Sun rotating toward us right now, so if they continue to be active, we might see some fun flares and aurorae from them. Stay tuned!