Visualizations by
Tom Bridgman
Released on February 11, 2015
M-flares are not the most powerful flares the Sun can emit, but sometimes even they can exhibit visually exciting behavior.
Here we show the lead-up to an M-flare which lauches a large amount of plasma into space. The eruption takes place starting around 12:00 UTC and launches over the next 15 minutes. But stay with it, and you'll also see some of the plasma falling back towards the Sun around 13:50 UTC.
GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation:
Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0