Eruptive events on the sun can be wildly different. Some come just with a solar flare, some with an additional ejection of solar material called a coronal mass ejection (CME), and some with complex moving structures in association with changes in magnetic field lines that loop up into the sun's atmosphere, the corona. On July 19, 2012, an eruption occurred on the sun that produced all three. A moderately powerful solar flare exploded on the sun's lower right hand limb, sending out light and radiation. Next came a CME, which shot off to the right out into space. And then, the sun treated viewers to one of its dazzling magnetic displays — a phenomenon known as coronal rain. Over the course of the next day, hot plasma in the corona cooled and condensed along strong magnetic fields in the region. Magnetic fields, themselves, are invisible, but the charged plasma is forced to move along the lines, showing up brightly in the extreme ultraviolet wavelength of 304 angstroms, which highlights material at a temperature of about 50,000 Kelvin. This plasma acts as a tracer, helping scientists watch the dance of magnetic fields on the sun, outlining the fields as it slowly falls back to the solar surface. The footage in this video was collected by the Solar Dynamics Observatory's AIA instrument. SDO collected one frame every 12 seconds, and the movie plays at 30 frames per second, so each second in this video corresponds to 6 minutes of real time. The video covers 12:30 a.m. EDT to 10:00 p.m. EDT on July 19, 2012.Watch this video on YouTube. ||

A crucial, and often underappreciated, facet of science lies in deciding how to turn the raw numbers of data into useful, understandable information — often through graphs and images. Such visualization techniques are needed for everything from making a map of planetary orbits based on nightly measurements of where they are in the sky to colorizing normally invisible light such as X-rays to produce "images" of the sun.More information, of course, requires more complex visualizations and occasionally such images are not just informative, but beautiful too.Such is the case with a new technique created by Nicholeen Viall, a solar scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. She creates images of the sun reminiscent of Van Gogh, with broad strokes of bright color splashed across a yellow background. But it's science, not art. The color of each pixel contains a wealth of information about the 12-hour history of cooling and heating at that particular spot on the sun. That heat history holds clues to the mechanisms that drive the temperature and movements of the sun's atmosphere, or corona.To look at the corona from a fresh perspective, Viall created a new kind of picture, making use of the high resolution provided by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). SDO's Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) provides images of the sun in 10 different wavelengths, each approximately corresponding to a single temperature of material. Therefore, when one looks at the wavelength of 171 angstroms, for example, one sees all the material in the sun's atmosphere that is a million degrees Kelvin. By looking at an area of the sun in different wavelengths, one can get a sense of how different swaths of material change temperature. If an area seems bright in a wavelength that shows a hotter temperature an hour before it becomes bright in a wavelength that shows a cooler temperature, one can gather information about how that region has changed over time.Viall's images show a wealth of reds, oranges, and yellow, meaning that over a 12-hour period the material appear to be cooling. Obviously there must have been heating in the process as well, since the corona isn't on a one-way temperature slide down to zero degrees. Any kind of steady heating throughout the corona would have shown up in Viall's images, so she concludes that the heating must be quick and impulsive — so fast that it doesn't show up in her images. This lends credence to those theories that say numerous nanobursts of energy help heat the corona. ||

On May 1, 2013, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) watched as an active region just around the East limb (left edge) of the sun erupted with a huge cloud of solar material—a heated, charged gas called plasma. This eruption, called a coronal mass ejection, or CME, sent the plasma streaming out through the solar system. Viewing the sun in the extreme ultraviolet wavelength of 304 angstroms, SDO provided a beautiful view of the initial arc as it left the solar surface. Such eruptions soon leave SDO's field of view, but other satellites in NASA's Heliophysics fleet can pick them up, tracking such space weather to determine if they are headed toward Earth or spacecraft near other planets. With advance warning, many space assets can be put into safe mode and protect themselves from the effects of such particle radiation.In addition to the images captured by SDO, the May 1, 2013 CME was also observed by the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). SOHO houses two overlapping coronagraphs—telescopes where the bright sun is blocked by a disk so it doesn't overpower the fainter solar atmosphere—and they both saw the CME continue outward. The LASCO C2 coronagraph shows the region out to about 2.5 million miles. The LASCO C3 coronagraph expands even farther out to around 13.5 million miles. Both of these instruments show the CME as it expands and becomes fainter on its trip away from the sun.NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) Ahead satellite saw the eruption from a very different angle. It, along with its twin STEREO Behind, is orbiting at a similar distance as Earth. STEREO-A orbits slightly faster than Earth and STEREO-B orbits slightly slower. Currently, STEREO-A is more than two-thirds of the way to being directly behind the sun, and has a view of the far side of the sun. From this perspective, the CME came off the right side of the sun. STEREO has an extreme ultraviolet camera similar to SDO's, but it also has coronagraphs like SOHO. As a result, using its two inner coronagraphs, it was able to track the CME from the solar surface out to 6.3 million miles.Working together, such missions provide excellent coverage of a wide variety of solar events, a wealth of scientific data—and lots of beautiful imagery.Watch this video on YouTube. ||

NASA's STEREO spacecraft and new data processing techniques have succeeded in tracking space weather events from their origin in the Sun's ultrahot corona to impact with the Earth 93 million miles away, resolving a 40-year mystery about the structure of the structures that cause space weather: how the structures that impact the Earth relate to the corresponding structures in the solar corona.Despite many instruments that monitor the Sun and a fleet of near-earth probes, the connection between near-Earth disturbances and their counterparts on the Sun has been obscure, because CMEs and the solar wind evolve and change during the 93,000,000 mile journey from the Sun to the Earth.STEREO includes "heliospheric imager" cameras that monitor the sky at large angles from the Sun, but the starfield and galaxy are 1,000 times brighter than the faint rays of sunlight reflected by free-floating electron clouds inside CMEs and the solar wind; this has made direct imaging of these important structures difficult or impossible, and limited understanding of the connection between space storms and the coronal structures that cause them.Newly released imagery reveals absolute brightness of detailed features in a large geoeffective CME in late 2008, connecting the original magnetized structure in the Sun's corona to the intricate anatomy of an interplanetary storm as it impacted the Earth three days later. At the time the data were collected, in late 2008, STEREO-A was nearly 45 degrees ahead of the Earth in its orbit, affording a very clear view of the Earth-Sun line.For the press conference Visual 1, a visualization of the STEREO orbits and the 2008 CME, go here.For Visual 7, a CME and reconnection animation, go here.For Visual 8, footage of the October 2003 solar storms, go here. ||

The sun erupted late on January 22, 2012 with an M8.7 class flare, an earth-directed coronal mass ejection (CME), and a burst of fast moving, highly energetic protons known as a "solar energetic particle" event. The latter has caused the strongest solar radiation storm since September 2005 according to NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center. ||

NASA scientists answer some common questions about the sun, space weather, and how they affect the Earth. This is a two-part series.Part One addresses:1. What is space weather?2. What are coronal mass ejections?3. What are solar flares?4. What are solar energetic particles?5. What causes flares and CMEs?Part Two addresses:1. Do all flares and CMEs affect the Earth?2. What happens when a flare or CME hits the Earth?3. How quickly can we feel the effects of space weather?4. Why are there more flares and CMEs happening now?For more information about all these questions and more, visit NASA's Space Weather FAQ.For individual interview responses to frequently asked space weather questions, go here. ||

April 21, 2012 marks the two-year anniversary of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) First Light press conference, where NASA revealed the first images taken by the spacecraft. This video highlights just some of the amazing events witnessed in SDO's second year. ||

A giant explosion of magnetic energy from the sun, called a coronal mass ejection, slams into and is deflected completely by the Earth's powerful magnetic field. The sun also continually sends out streams of light and radiation energy. Earth's atmosphere acts like a radiation shield, blocking quite a bit of this energy.Much of the radiation energy that makes it through is reflected back into space by clouds, ice and snow and the energy that remains helps to drive the Earth system, powering a remarkable planetary engine — the climate. It becomes the energy that feeds swirling wind and ocean currents as cold air and surface waters move toward the equator and warm air and water moves toward the poles — all in an attempt to equalize temperatures around the world.A jury appointed by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Science magazine has selected "Excerpt from Dynamic Earth" as the winner of the 2013 NSF International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge for the Video category. This animation will be highlighted in the February 2014 special section of Science and will be hosted on ScienceMag.org and NSF.govThis animation was selected for the Computer Animation Festival's Electronic Theater at the Association for Computer Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH), a prestigious computer graphics and technical research forum. This is an excerpt from the fulldome, high-resolution show 'Dynamic Earth: Exploring Earth's Climate Engine.' The Dynamic Earth dome show was selected as a finalist in the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival Science Media Awards under the category "Best Immersive Cinema - Fulldome". ||

On August 31, 2012 a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun's atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth's magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, with a glancing blow. causing aurora to appear on the night of Monday, September 3. ||

We are all familiar with weather on Earth, but how much do you know about weather in space? Suitable for all ages, this introduction to space weather covers vocabulary like coronal mass ejection (CME), solar wind, and solar flare. It also outlines potential effects of solar storms on our planet.This video is available in English and Spanish, both with English subtitles.Todo el mundo está familiarizado con el clima de la Tierra pero, ¿cuánto sabes sobre meteorología espacial? Este video introductorio al clima espacial, apropiado para todas las edades y niveles, explica términos científicos como eyección de masa coronal, viento solar o erupción solar.También provee una descripción general sobre los efectos potenciales que tienen las tormentas solares en nuestro planeta.El vídeo está disponible en español e inglés, ambas versiones con subtítulos en inglés. ||