The Sun Produces Two CMEs
- 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, CMEs at this strength have had little effect. They may cause auroras near the poles but are unlikely to disrupt electrical systems on Earth or interfere with GPS or satellite-based communications systems.

The second of two CMEs from the evening of Feb. 5, 2013, can be seen bursting away from the sun in the upper left hand side of this image, which was captured by the joint ESA/NASA mission the Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) at 11:12 p.m. EST. The sun itself is obscured in this picture &mdash taken by an instrument called a coronagraph — so that its bright light doesn't drown out the picture of the dimmer surrounding atmosphere, called the corona.

The second of two CMEs from the evening of Feb. 5, 2013, can be seen bursting away from the sun in the upper left hand side of this image, which was captured by the joint ESA/NASA mission the Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) at 1:54 a.m. EST on February 6. The sun itself is obscured in this picture &mdash taken by an instrument called a coronagraph — so that its bright light doesn't drown out the picture of the dimmer surrounding atmosphere, called the corona.

The second of two CMEs from the evening of Feb. 5, 2013, can be seen bursting away from the sun in the upper left hand side of this image, which was captured by the joint ESA/NASA mission the Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) at 11:00 p.m. EST. The sun itself is obscured in this picture &mdash taken by an instrument called a coronagraph — so that its bright light doesn't drown out the picture of the dimmer surrounding atmosphere, called the corona.

The second of two CMEs from the evening of Feb. 5, 2013, can be seen bursting away from the sun in the upper left hand side of this image, which was captured by the joint ESA/NASA mission the Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) at 11:24 p.m. EST. The sun itself is obscured in this picture &mdash taken by an instrument called a coronagraph — so that its bright light doesn't drown out the picture of the dimmer surrounding atmosphere, called the corona.

The second of two CMEs from the evening of Feb. 5, 2013, can be seen bursting away from the sun in the upper left hand side of this image, which was captured by the joint ESA/NASA mission the Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) at 11:36 p.m. EST. The sun itself is obscured in this picture &mdash taken by an instrument called a coronagraph — so that its bright light doesn't drown out the picture of the dimmer surrounding atmosphere, called the corona.

The first of two CMEs from the evening of Feb. 5, 2013, can be seen bursting away from the sun in the upper left hand side of this image, which was captured by the joint ESA/NASA mission the Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) at 8:54 p.m. EST. The sun itself is obscured in this picture &mdash taken by an instrument called a coronagraph — so that its bright light doesn't drown out the picture of the dimmer surrounding atmosphere, called the corona.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Animators
- Tom Bridgman (GST) [Lead]
- Scott Wiessinger (KBRwyle)
Writer
- Karen Fox (ADNET)
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 171 (A.K.A. 171 Filter) (Collected with the AIA sensor)
Dataset can be found at: http://jsoc.stanford.edu/
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.