August 24, 2014: Magnificent M-flare

  • Released Wednesday, February 11, 2015
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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.

The flare at ejected CME launches from the western limb of the Sun (lower left of image) in this sequence from the SDO/AIA 131 angstrom filter.  Full resolution 4Kx4K frames.

The flare at ejected CME launches from the western limb of the Sun (lower left of image) in this sequence from the SDO/AIA 131 angstrom filter. Full resolution 4Kx4K frames.

The flare at ejected CME launches from the western limb of the Sun (lower left of image) in this sequence from the SDO/AIA 171 angstrom filter.  Full resolution 4Kx4K frames.

The flare at ejected CME launches from the western limb of the Sun (lower left of image) in this sequence from the SDO/AIA 171 angstrom filter. Full resolution 4Kx4K frames.

The flare at ejected CME launches from the western limb of the Sun (lower left of image) in this sequence from the SDO/AIA 304 angstrom filter.  Full resolution 4Kx4K frames.

The flare at ejected CME launches from the western limb of the Sun (lower left of image) in this sequence from the SDO/AIA 304 angstrom filter. Full resolution 4Kx4K frames.



Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio, the SDO Science Team, and the Virtual Solar Observatory.

Release date

This page was originally published on Wednesday, February 11, 2015.
This page was last updated on Wednesday, May 3, 2023 at 1:50 PM EDT.


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