January 31, 2013 CME and Prominence Eruption
- Visualizations by:
- Tom Bridgman
- View full credits
Not to be confused with a solar flare, a CME is a solar phenomenon that can send solar particles into space and reach Earth one to three days later.
Earth-directed CMEs can cause a space weather phenomenon called a geomagnetic storm, which occurs when they connect with the outside of the Earth's magnetic envelope, the magnetosphere, for an extended period of time. In the past, CME's such as this have caused auroras near the poles but didn't disrupt electrical systems on Earth or interfere with GPS or satellite-based communications systems.

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) captured these image of a coronal mass ejection (CME), erupting on the left side of the sun early in the morning of Jan 31, 2013, as it was moving away from the sun into space. These images from SOHO are called coronagraphs, in which the bright light of the sun is blocked in order to make the dimmer structures in the sun's atmosphere, or corona, visible.
Credit: ESA&NASA/SOHO

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) captured these image of a coronal mass ejection (CME), erupting on the left side of the sun early in the morning of Jan 31, 2013, as it was moving away from the sun into space. These images from SOHO are called coronagraphs, in which the bright light of the sun is blocked in order to make the dimmer structures in the sun's atmosphere, or corona, visible. No Labels.
Credit: ESA&NASA/SOHO
For More Information
See http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/News013113-cme.html
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO
Animator
- Tom Bridgman (GST) [Lead]
Writer
- Karen Fox (ADNET)
Video editor
- Scott Wiessinger (KBRwyle)
Producer
- Scott Wiessinger (KBRwyle)
Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Tapes
This visualization originally appeared on the following tapes:- None
Datasets used in this visualization
SOHO
SOHO monitors the Sun with a variety of instruments. Among the SOHO instruments is the Michelson Doppler Interferometer (MDI) and the Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT).
Dataset can be found at: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov
See more visualizations using this data setSOHO (Collected with the Large Angle Spectrometric COronagraph (LASCO) sensor)
Dataset can be found at: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov
See more visualizations using this data setSDO
Dataset can be found at: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/
See more visualizations using this data setSDO AIA 304 (A.K.A. 304 Filter) (Collected with the AIA sensor)
Dataset can be found at: http://jsoc.stanford.edu/
See more visualizations using this data setNote: 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.