Image: Level 3 icon [adapted], by Us

Image: “Filament of solar material from Sun erupting into space as a coronal mass ejection, traveling at over 900 miles per second,” by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, 31 August 2012, in Wikimedia Commons … https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Magnificent_CME_Erupts_on_the_Sun_-_August_31.jpg … CC BY 2.0 Generic … DESCRIPTION: “On August 31, 2012 a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth’s magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, causing aurora to appear on the night of Monday, September 3. Pictured here is a lighten blended version of the 304 and 171 angstrom wavelengths taken from the Solar Dynamics Observatory. Cropped”