WASHINGTON: When the sun’s roiling surface starts acting up, and you have the right gear to view it, the result is usually a visual treat.
And sometimes, that treat takes a strange form, like the one in the video above.
“A single plume of plasma, many times taller than the diameter of Earth, rose up from the sun, twisted and spun around, all the while spewing streams of particles for over two days, Aug. 17-19, 2015, before breaking apart,” NASA explained when it released the video on Friday. “At times, its shape resembled the Eiffel Tower.”
Just how much taller than Earth was this solar shout-out to the famous Parisian landmark? As it happens, Swedish astrophotographer Göran Strand also spotted the flare, and provided this handy comparison:
It’s not the only dancing plasma plume on the sun’s surface that week, but it’s certainly the most impressive.
The video was captured by NASA’s orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory. As with most of SDO’s imagery, it was filtered through a wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light, rather than bring a true-colour image.
