The sun released two gargantuan solar flares of plasma on Friday in back-to-back storms, a NASA video revealed. According to Space.com, the first eruption occurred at 1 a.m. EST, with a second eruption, or solar prominence, happening four hours later.
The Los Angeles Times reported that the space agency said that the flares of "hot gas made of electrically charged hydrogen and helium" was not directed towards Earth. However, the solar prominences were so big, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) was not able to capture them all within its camera's view.
The video, a mere 10 seconds long, shows two enormous fiery flares shooting out from the sun and extending far into space. Officials at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, which overseers the SDO mission, explained, "The prominence plasma flows along a tangled and twisted structure of magnetic fields generated by the sun's internal dynamo. An erupting prominence occurs when such a structure becomes unstable and burst outward, releasing the plasma."
Although Friday's solar flare was not directed towards Earth, flares are known to disrupt radio and satellite transmissions. They can also mess with power grids, the LA Times reported. According to Space.com, recent solar activity on Nov. 13-14 "sparked a geomagnetic storm that supercharged the Earth's auroras, creating spectacular northern lights displays for observers at high latitudes."
The sun is currently in the middle of its 11-year solar weather cycle, called Solar Cycle 24, that is expected to peak in 2013.
NASA heliophysicist Alex Young told the LA Times, "We...expect to reach it toward the end of 2013 or into 2014. We will continue to see active sunspot regions come and go but with the frequency and intensity slowly increasing. So there will be more to come."
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