Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2012 September 17 A Solar Filament Erupts Image Credit: NASA's GSFC, SDO AIA Team Explanation: What's happened to our Sun? Nothing very unusual -- it just threw a filament. At the end of last month, a long standing solar filament suddenly erupted into space producing an energetic Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). The filament had been held up for days by the Sun's ever changing magnetic field and the timing of the eruption was unexpected. Watched closely by the Sun-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory, the resulting explosion shot electrons and ions into the Solar System, some of which arrived at Earth three days later and impacted Earth's magnetosphere, causing visible aurorae. Loops of plasma surrounding an active region can be seen above the erupting filament in the ultraviolet image. If you missed this auroral display please do not despair -- over the next two years our Sun will be experiencing a solar maximum of activity which promises to produce more CMEs that induce more Earthly auroras.
If I were blind, and you were to describe the sun to me, I would think you were full of it. The sun almost seems like something out of a nightmare. Crazy how we spin around that orange ball all day long.
whats even scarier is that there are stars in our solar system that are over 1000x bigger than our sun. there is one star, dont remember the dumb name it has, but it takes over 1000 suns in a row to get from one end to the other. i makes stars like Betelgeuse look tiny, and betelgeuse is a fucking mammoth compared to our puny sun love space stuff and love all the crazy facts about it!