Massive Solar Eruption Close-up

  • Released Thursday, June 30, 2011
  • Updated Monday, October 19, 2015 at 10:42AM
  • ID: 10801
On June 7, 2011 the Sun unleashed an M-2 (medium-sized) solar flare with a spectacular coronal mass ejection (CME). The large cloud of particles mushroomed up and fell back down looking as if it covered an area almost half the solar surface.

SDO observed the flare's peak at 1:41 AM ET. SDO recorded these images in extreme ultraviolet light that show a very large eruption of cool gas. It is somewhat unique because at many places in the eruption there seems to be even cooler material — at temperatures less than 80,000 K.

This video uses the full-resolution 4096 x 4096 pixel images at a one minute time cadence to provide the highest quality, finest detail version possible.

It is interesting to compare the event in different wavelengths because they each see different temperatures of plasma. See the transcript for more notes on this.

Frames for each wavelength are available on these separate pages: 304, 171, 211, and1700.

Short video showing the eruption in various wavelengths and magnifications.

The prominence eruption in AIA's 304 ångstrom wavelength. This video is 4kx4k and will not play on all computers.

The prominence eruption in AIA's 211 ångstrom wavelength, colored in EIT green.

The prominence eruption in AIA's 211 ångstrom wavelength, colored in EIT green.

The prominence eruption in AIA's 171 ångstrom wavelength.

The prominence eruption in AIA's 171 ångstrom wavelength.

A still of the prominence eruption in 304.

A still of the prominence eruption in 304.

A closeup still of the eruption at higher resolution.

A closeup still of the eruption at higher resolution.

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Missions

This visualization is related to the following missions:

Series

This visualization can be found in the following series:

Tapes

This visualization originally appeared on the following tapes:
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Datasets used in this visualization

SDO AIA 1700 (A.K.A. 1700 Filter) (Collected with the AIA sensor)
JOINT SCIENCE OPERATIONS CENTER

Dataset can be found at: http://jsoc.stanford.edu/

See more visualizations using this data set
SDO AIA 171 (A.K.A. 171 Filter) (Collected with the AIA sensor)
JOINT SCIENCE OPERATIONS CENTER

Dataset can be found at: http://jsoc.stanford.edu/

See more visualizations using this data set
SDO AIA 211 (A.K.A. 211 Filter) (Collected with the AIA sensor)
JOINT SCIENCE OPERATIONS CENTER

Dataset can be found at: http://jsoc.stanford.edu/

See more visualizations using this data set
SDO AIA 304 (A.K.A. 304 Filter) (Collected with the AIA sensor)
JOINT SCIENCE OPERATIONS CENTER

Dataset can be found at: http://jsoc.stanford.edu/

See more visualizations using this data set

Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.

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