NASA | Massive Solar Eruption Close-up

Turn on captions for more information about what you are seeing. On June 7, 2011 the Sun unleashed an M-2 (medium-sized) solar flare with a spectacular coronal mass ejection (CME). The large cloud of particles mushroomed up and fell back down looking as if it covered an area almost half the solar surface. SDO observed the flare's peak at 1:41 AM ET. SDO recorded these images in extreme ultraviolet light that show a very large eruption of cool gas. It is somewhat unique because at many places in the eruption there seems to be even cooler material -- at temperatures less than 80,000 K. This video uses the full-resolution 4096 x 4096 pixel images at a 1 minute time cadence and to provide the highest quality, finest detail version possible. It also shows the event in multiple wavelengths.