Every day, the sun releases the equivalent of more than 100 billion tons of TNT! Yeah. But wow! is it beautiful.
Here are a few visuals of the sun that will remind you what the sun truly is: A beautiful ball of nuclear fire that scientists predict will supernova in about 5 billion years.
1) Solar Flare On July 6, 2012
This flare occurred while pointed away from the Earth, however if a flare of this size were to occur with the Earth in it's path, it would have caused slight radio disruption to both high- and low-level radio frequencies.
This clip was captured from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) - a space-based telescope that has been studying the Sun since 2010.
You can see another view of this solar flare taken from a different space-based observatory called the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). This view shows the Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) that occurred around the same time.
2) Ultraviolet Image Of The Turbulence On The Surface Of The Sun
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory captured this photograph of the sun showing the extreme turbulence of the surface. You can see parts of the turbulence looping back to reconnect with the sun due to magnetic forces.
3) Plasma Regions On The Surface
Spectacular view captured by Hinode's Solar Optical Telescope on January 12th 2007. Notice the hair-like plasma features flying off of the surface of the sun. Those 'filaments' of plasma are connecting different regions of the sun that have different (and changing) magnetic polarity.
For the first time, a mission designed to set its eyes on black holes and other objects far from our solar system has turned its gaze back closer to home, capturing images of our sun. NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has taken its first picture of the sun, producing the most sensitive solar portrait ever taken in high-energy X-rays.
4) High-Energy X-Ray Emissions
The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) is a space-based telescope, launched in 2012, designed to study black holes and high-energy particles in the Universe. For the first time in late 2014, NASA turned this telescope around to point at our own sun. The view below shows the blue and green highlights from super-high-energy X-Ray emissions, and the red and orange sections of the photograph served as the base of the photograph from an ultraviolet image from SDO.
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