Earth Meet Sun: NASA Shows The Grand Scale Of Solar Explosions

The Earth is a tiny insignificant spec of dirt and oxygen to the sun; at least that is the impression we got this week from NASA and some beautiful imagery the organization released to the public.

The last day of August at 4:36 pm ET, a filament of solar material exploded out of the sun at more than 900 miles per second. That eruption was caught on video and in photographs by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Catching the explosion was cool enough, but the observatory went one step further, showing earth’s relation to the explosion in a photograph to scale.

Notice how our planet is barely one-fiftieth to scale when compared to just the explosion being released from the sun.

That particular ejection of solar plasma from our sun did not head directly towards earth; however, it was enough to create a September 3 aurora over Whitehorse, Yukon, located in western Canada.

Here is further photographic imagery of the sun’s most recent plasma explosion as captured by NASA scientists. In the photo shown below, a side-by-side comparison of four images of the filament explosion are shown in different wavelengths. NASA scientists collected wavelength information to examine temperature readings in the solar material. NASA scientists hope to further explore explosion dynamics inside the sun.

If the sun shooting out enough solar plasma to destroy its surroundings isn’t enough for you to be impressed, NASA scientists have also managed to release a video of the solar event.

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