WATCH: Mesmerizing NASA Video Shows ‘Canyon Of Fire’ On The Sun

Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center combined two days of satellite data to release a spectacularly trippy video Thursday of a “magnetic filament of solar material” that erupted on the Sun in late September.

According to NASA, a 200,000 mile long piece of filament dislodged from the Sun and ripped through the its atmosphere, leaving an impression of a “canyon of fire” in its wake where magnetic fields formerly held the filament in place. The roiling inferno seen in the video is not fire, however: the Sun is made of plasma, which is composed of “particles so hot that their electrons have boiled off, creating a charged gas that is interwoven with magnetic fields,” NASA noted.

Latest Idealab
Comments
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: