Vast Solar Filament Seen By NASA Probe Stretches One Million Miles - Huffington Post

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Something described as a 'filament' sounds like such a tiny thing. But when the filament in question is big enough to be seen snaking across a large swath of the sun's surface, it's another story.

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NASA's SDO captured these images of a solar filament in extreme UV light, using different wavelengths to show the solar material at different temperatures. The solar filament appears as a dark snaking line embedded across the upper right of the sun in this image, which was taken on Sept. 30, 2014. NASA's SDO captured the image in extreme UV light. The Earth is shown to scale.

Just check out this ginormous solar filament NASA spotted on Sept. 30, courtesy of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft, in the video above and photos below.

Straightened out, the filament would measure around one million miles in length.

NASA says the spacecraft's photos may hold clues to what causes solar filaments, which become suspended by powerful magnetic forces above the sun's surface -- and how they trigger huge eruptions from the sun called coronal mass ejections.

These eruptions can disrupt the flow of solar wind and even send high-energy particles toward Earth.

Solar filaments can last for days or even weeks. So this impressive one may be around for quite a while.

Entities 0 Name: NASA Count: 4 1 Name: Earth Count: 2 2 Name: SDO Count: 2 3 Name: Solar Dynamics Observatory Count: 1 Related 0 Url: http://ift.tt/10IzkIP Title: Engineers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida install one of the most important assemblies int Description: Engineers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida install one of the most important assemblies into its new Orion spacecraft: t he launch abort system. Orion will carry astronauts to parts of the Solar System not yet explored by humans-like Mars. [ NASA]