More Dancing Plasma on the Sun

By Nancy Atkinson - May 18, 2011 at 9:27 PM UTC | Solar Astronomy

Here's the reason for

those auroras Tammy was talking about

...The Solar Dynamics Observatory captures a beautiful filament eruption from the Sun in the early hours of May 17, 2011 which sent a cloud of plasma into space. This Coronal Mass Ejection was not aimed at Earth but it will likely interact with Earth's magnetic field by the 19th, so be on the lookout for auroras. The second part of the video is from today, May 18, 2011 and shows some dancing plasma and more "plasma rain" similar to

what we showed a last week.

few days ago. The Sun's gravity grabs and pulls the plasma back, even when it appears ready to travel off into space.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com