A massive eruption on the surface of the sun this week blasted
out a wave of super-hot plasma so high that it could tower over
20 Earths, NASA officials say. The New Year's Eve solar eruption
occurred Monday and was captured on camera by NASA's powerful
Solar Dynamics Observatory, a sun-watching spacecraft that
constantly records high-definition video of our star. The
result: an eye-popping video of the New Year's Eve sun storm.
Despite its size, the solar eruption was not the most powerful
example of the sun's stormy wrath, NASA officials said.
"Magnetic forces drove the flow of plasma, but without
sufficient force to overcome the sun's gravity much of the
plasma fell back into the sun," NASA officials wrote in an image
description Friday. "The length of the eruption extends about
160,000 miles (257,495 kilometers) out from the sun. With Earth
about 7,900 miles (12,714 km) in diameter, this relatively minor
eruption is about 20 times the diameter of our planet." Some
NASA officials described Monday's sun eru