NASA satellite captures amazing views of arching solar plasma

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has been keeping its unblinking eye on our Sun since 2009, and over the past two weeks it has been seeing some amazing activity that shows just how dynamic our Sun can be.

Some of the best views that SDO captures are of activity on the 'limbs' of the Sun — the 'left' and 'right' edges of the Sun, where we can see things against the blackness of space. From August 27th to 28th, the satellite saw arching loops on the eastern limb, showing solar plasma flowing along magnetic field lines.

In the days after that, these archs were 'lost' against the brightness of the Sun's surface, but then, a little over a week later, on September 4th and 5th, SDO watched as the same 'active region' reached the western limb, so that the show could continue.

The Sun's magnetic field extends far, far out into space, to well past the orbit of Pluto. Voyager 1, which may or may not have left the solar system (several times now), is still seeing the influence of the solar magnetic field even though it's over 18.7 billion kilometres away. However, since the Sun is a huge ball of super-heated plasma, small circulations of that plasma create smaller magnetic fields that poke out from the surface, and the charged plasma flows along the magnetic field lines, making them show up very clearly against the blackness of space.

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Since sunlight seems so constant from here on Earth, it's easy to forget that this kind of activity is going on nearly all the time. Thanks to NASA and the SDO team, though, we're always kept informed of what's really going on at the centre of our solar system.

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