A HUGE solar filament erupts into space

Bad Astronomy
By Phil Plait
Sep 10, 2012 8:45 PMNov 20, 2019 4:08 AM

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On August 31, the Sun threw a major tantrum. It started with a vast arc of material towering over its surface, a stream of plasma flowing between two sunspots. Sometimes these collapse back down to the Sun's surface, but this one exploded, blasting hundreds of millions of tons of material out into space. SDO captured this ridiculously awesome picture of the arc just before it erupted:

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