A Solar Flare of Many Colors

Here’s a great look at a beautiful, leaping C2.2-Class solar flare from the Sun on January 5, 2012. The Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the event and what’s awesome is how SDO can video one event in several different wavelengths.

From the SDO team:

The first view is 304 angstroms showing the cooler dense plumes of plasma (filaments and prominences). The temperature is at about 90,000 F.

The “Yellow” view is 171 angstroms and shows the coronal loops where plasma moves along magnetic field lines very well. The temperatures seen here are at approx. 1.8 million F.

The “Blue” view is 335 angstroms and highlights the active region of the outer atmosphere of the Sun, the corona. Active regions, solar flares, and coronal mass ejections appear bright here.

The last two views are composites of three wavelengths added together; 304, 193 and 171.

The actual event happened for approximately 1.5 hours.