Saturday Video: Secrets of the Sun

by Salman Hameed

 About a week ago, NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory captured this fantastic flare:

A long filament erupted on the sun on August 31, 2012, shown here in this still captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The eruption lasted from noon EDT to 1:45 a.m. the next morning. This still shows light at 304 Angstroms which help scientists observe the sun's atmosphere, or corona. Pictured next to the filament is a superimposed Earth, shown to scale. Credit: NASA/SDO/AIA

Glad that the Earth is not located as is shown in the picture. We get a bit of a buffer for being 93 million miles away. Inspired by this image, here is a NOVA episode on the Secrets of the Sun: