"On August 31, 2012 a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun's atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth's magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, with a glancing blow. causing aurora to appear on the night of Monday, September 3. https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11095

This video was created using source images found here https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4909."

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[–] Holyhandgrenade@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

This is amazing! I did not expect the sheer speed of it, considering the size of the sun. 900mps is around 1500 km/second, which is CRAZY fast. In comparison, a Category 5 hurricane is about 70 meters per second. I just can't fathom how fast this is.