CMEpalooza - May 14, 2013

  • Released Thursday, May 16, 2013
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As active Region 11748 rotated into Earth's view over the left limb of the sun it erupted with many large flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Some of the flares were X-class.

This event is of particular interest as it launched three CMEs that are expected to merge into a large plasma cloud and continue heading out into the solar system. A few NASA spacecraft were in the path of this event — their operators can put the spacecraft into safe mode for protection when required.

This movie shows the 'rapid-fire' launch of three CMEs which merge together as they move out from the sun.

This color table represents how displaying each of the three variables as separate red, green, and blue color ramps combine to identify characteristics in the solar wind and CME.

This color table represents how displaying each of the three variables as separate red, green, and blue color ramps combine to identify characteristics in the solar wind and CME.

The mass density in atomic mass units (AMUs) per cubic centimeter. 1 AMU/cc corresponds to 1 hydrogen ion or atom per cc.

The mass density in atomic mass units (AMUs) per cubic centimeter. 1 AMU/cc corresponds to 1 hydrogen ion or atom per cc.

Plasma temperture scale, in Kelvin.

Plasma temperture scale, in Kelvin.

For More Information

See http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/News051213-flare.html

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, the Space Weather Research Center (SWRC) and the Community-Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC), Enlil and Dusan Odstrcil (GMU).

This page was originally published on Thursday, May 16, 2013.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:52 PM EDT.

Datasets used in this visualization

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.