13 days on the sun

We are uploading Creative Commons videos; credit goes to NASA. The video shows a 75,000-mile-wide active region on the Sun, known as AR2665, as it rotated into view in July 2017. The active region is an area of intense and complex magnetic fields, and it produced several solar flares, a coronal mass ejection, and a solar energetic particle event during its 13-day journey across the Sun.Show more

Solar flares are explosions of energy that release billions of tons of matter into space. The coronal mass ejection is a huge cloud of plasma and magnetic field that is ejected from the Sun's atmosphere. The solar energetic particle event is a burst of high-energy particles that are released from the Sun.

The material from the solar flares, coronal mass ejection, and solar energetic particle event took two days to travel 93 million miles to Earth, where it sparked an enhanced aurora. The aurora is a natural light display in the sky that is caused by the interaction of charged particles from the Sun with the Earth's atmosphere.

The NASA video "13 Days on the Sun" provides a stunning glimpse of the life of an active region on the Sun and the powerful forces that are unleashed when these regions erupt. It is a reminder of the importance of studying the Sun and its activity, as these events can have a significant impact on Earth's climate and space environment.