Time-Lapse Shows Solar Eruption Engulfs View Of Venus (VIDEO)

Too bright!

This time-lapse footage captured Tuesday by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory shows a "coronal mass ejection" as it sparks between the camera and its sightline of Venus. Of course, the Sun and and the "Morning Star" are more than 62 million miles apart, as Space.com reports, so there was never any real threat of this solar eruption getting too close for comfort.

This particular solar eruption may take an interesting angle, but it's not the most powerful spectacle we've seen lately. Another occurrence captured on camera is being hailed as the most powerful solar flare in nearly five years. Earth "lucked out," as a solar eruption did not face Earth, although it did "rock the Sun."

The sun's solar flare activity is expected to peak in 2013.

WATCH:

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Another video on solar storms:

More Solar Storms on the Way

Comments

[nomadrdw]

01:48 PM on 08/20/2011

all hail RA.

[aveindustries]

01:19 AM on 08/20/2011

Someone forward this news to Al Gore.

[palindrom]

09:27 AM on 08/20/2011

Solar activity has very little to do with global warming. This event, and others like it, represent an entirely minuscule fraction of the total solar output, which is almost all photospheric radiation (sunlight).

The sunlight warms the earth to an equilibrium temperature, which is determined in part by the opacity of the atmosphere in the far infrared (the band in which the earth radiates back). And that opacity is, in turn, affected significantly by the concentration of CO2. The concentration is rapidly increasing, and the earth's equilibrium temperature is observed to be increasing as a consequence.

Palindrom's second law, by the way, is: "The more a poster mentions Al Gore in connection with global warming, the less they understand about the underlying science."

[aveindustries]

09:45 AM on 08/20/2011

So let me get this straight. Your solution is to tax everyone's breathing, because we exhale carbon dioxide, even while the sun is increasing it's output of solar radiation? Do you work for Al Gore or something? He's getting fabulously wealthy off people like you.

[aveindustries]

09:48 AM on 08/20/2011

Furthermore, you act like carbon dioxide is a bad thing when all plants need it to survive. We could solve this problem very easy by planting more trees.

[janetislight]

09:55 PM on 08/19/2011

Escuse the typos in my post. The correct address is earthpulse.com. I you click on the left links of Science, then again on HAARP you can see what I am talking about.

[janetislight]

09:47 PM on 08/19/2011

Such love comment volume on a very relavent topic. Lets say that we have a solar flare like in 1859. The damage would thousands fold. Not just because of more stuff, but of less ionosphere. We have been tearing through it like crazy with every launch of a satellite, rocket, space shuttle etc., and it IS weaker. We have also played with it through the HAARP projecct as has Russia in a big way. We also shot copper filings into it to see what would happen. A great great deal of South America's shorline slipped into the ocean after than one. You can google, "The HAARP Angels Don't Play." And I also think earthpuls,com is still out there. It's all based on Dr. Telsa's technology, so you can probably google that as well. If one that large comes this way, I want it to shoot right at me, because the aftermath would be horrific.

[palindrom]

10:53 PM on 08/19/2011

I'm an astronomer and physicist -- I know a lot of people who specialize in the ionosphere, including some who actually use HAARP.

The conspiracy theories around it are completely baseless. Nick Begich is, basically, deluded. It's really just a modest radar used to tickle the ionosphere slightly.

Oh, and Tesla, who was a great technologist in his early years, became a blowhard and a crank in his later years.

[onionboy]

11:12 PM on 08/19/2011

And rocket launches breaking up the ionosphere? The deluded nature of how powerful some people believe humans to be, the hubris. We're small creatures...in the universe, and on the planet. Neither will notice our passing if we wipe ourselves out.

And you're right on Tesla. He was still brilliant, could still do great things when given a task, but left to his own theories at that time...

[janetislight]

11:13 PM on 08/19/2011

Why are they tickling it? To what end. What purpose. Telsa is irrelevent to the conversation. I just mentioned it was his technology that it was based on, which is true so that people can google it. And why is NRDC going to get involved?

[Rude Monk]

11:36 PM on 08/19/2011

Pay no attention to the astronomer or "physicists".
Some of them are also working as contractors for the military so they're paid more than one salary.
They have no interest in revealing anything.

[palindrom]

09:22 AM on 08/20/2011

I'm paid by a private university, and by the NSF, and have nothing whatsoever to do with HAARP.

But I do know many people in the geophysics/space physics community, and I do have some technical and physics background -- and the claims that HAARP is some kind of sinister superweapon are among the most nonsensical ravings out there in the conspiracy-o-sphere.

[NerdyStudent]

03:52 PM on 08/19/2011

Oh my god a real science story! *Nerdgasming*

Do more! Please! Stop the computer/tablet/phone nonsense, and do more SCIENCE!

[palindrom]

10:55 PM on 08/19/2011

Yes indeed, more science!

Especially if they hire one or two science journalists to edit. There are a lot of good ones out there.

[Keefe Lehman]

09:40 AM on 08/19/2011

I love how we are yet to learn if every hundred or so years a solar storm will come along and wipe out the technological playground we have created on earth. Guess we will just have to find out the hard way.

[fds]

11:54 PM on 08/18/2011

I love the universe.

[orbitxal1]

10:55 PM on 08/18/2011

I like the even better just released movie of a solar mass ejection traveling from the Sun all the way to Earth. Viewed by the NASA Stereo A spacecraft. A new data processing technique was also applied get the new views never before seen. This articles view just happens to be in the line of sight with Venus.

[SteagleCobEagle]

03:59 PM on 08/19/2011

link!??!

[orbitxal1]

05:56 PM on 08/19/2011

Go to NASA STEREO website. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stereo/main/index.html

[NunyaBus99]

10:01 PM on 08/18/2011

very cool! (not for Venus)

[spilkus]

01:04 AM on 08/19/2011

I think the sun is between us and Venus. The ejection just comes between our sight of it and us so no big squirt toward Venus actually.

[M4dwoman]

09:23 PM on 08/18/2011

Um, I can still see Venus.

[palindrom]

08:05 AM on 08/19/2011

These things glow, but they're highly transparent.