Mesmerizing NASA video reveals ‘graceful’ solar eruption

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which keeps a near-constant watch on the activity of our sun, captured the images in the video above, just as an medium-strength solar flare erupted on the morning of April 2. Pumping the video resolution up as far as you can (via the settings tool along the bottom of the video) is highly recommended.

The view in the video isn't in visible light, but in two different wavelengths of ultraviolet light (171 Angstroms and 304 Angstroms, colorized in yellow and red, respectively, according to the video description). This shows off all the mesmerizing rolling and swirling of the solar 'surface' along with all the intense arcs of material in and around the active region where the flare originated.

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Solar flares are immense eruptions that can dwarf the Earth itself, and we have to always be watching to see if they will affect us. Once it was thought that we really only needed to worry about the strongest of them, the X-class flares, due to the incredible speed of their coronal mass ejections and the potential for them to cause failures in our orbiting satellites and in power grids on the surface. However, a recent study has shown that combinations of weaker flares can produce situations just as serious, and one particular event from the summer of 2012 even rivaled the most powerful of events, like was seen during the solar storm of 1859. Fortunately, it would seem that such combined events are just as rare as extremely powerful flares, but it does mean we need to watch out for more of them in the future.

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