Solar Activity and Space Weather Pictures

Magnetic Loops

Image courtesy SDO/NASA

An extreme ultraviolet picture taken by a NASA satellite in February 2011 captured the beginnings of a solar flare—a powerful burst of radiation from the sun. The image revealed that the root of the flare was made up of many fine loops of plasma.

Such plasma loops trace the sun's normally invisible magnetic field lines, helping scientists visualize the connections between magnetically active regions on the solar surface.

Sunspot Cluster

Image courtesy SOHO/ESA/NASA

Dark, planet—size blemishes on the surface of the sun are knots of intense magnetic activity called sunspots, some of which are seen above in a September 2000 picture from a NASA satellite. The spots appear dark in visible light because they are slightly cooler than the surrounding regions.

Sunspots often travel in groups across the solar surface and can linger for days or even months. The spots are the birthplaces of solar events such as flares and coronal mass ejections.

Visible Spots

Photograph courtesy Fabiano Belisario Diniz

Some sunspots are so large that they are visible from Earth even without the aid of a telescope. The monster sunspot shown above, for example, was photographed during a sunset in Curitiba, Brazil, in September 2011.

The numbers of sunspots increase and decrease in a predictable pattern known as a solar cycle. This cycle is driven by the reversal of the sun's magnetic north and south poles, an event that happens about every 11 years.

Twisting Plasma

Image courtesy SDO/NASA

Seen by a NASA space telescope, this mass of plasma erupted from the sun in November 2011.

The superheated gas twisted and turned in space for almost a day, like a kite buffeted by the wind. Instead of currents of air, though, the plasma eruption was being swirled by the sun's constantly shifting magnetic field lines.

Aurora Rivers

Photograph courtesy NASA

Rivers of brilliant green auroras flow over Earth in a picture taken by astronauts aboard the International Space Station in September 2011. The light show is the product of fast-moving solar particles colliding with and electrically charging the gases in Earth's atmosphere.

Solar flares can enhance the effects of the northern and southern lights by sending large amounts of energized particles into Earth's magnetic field, where they get channeled toward the Poles.

Solar Connections

Image courtesy SDO/NASA

This composite picture from a NASA satellite shows the sun's surface in multiple wavelengths of light. Orange and blue regions are magnetically active zones with opposite polarity.

The image reveals how arcs of plasma, seen in yellow, emerge from and link regions of strong magnetic activity.

Sun Scar

Image courtesy SDO/NASA

An elongated solar filament appears as a reddish-purple scar across the face of the sun in this December 2010 picture, which combines three different wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light.

Filaments are relatively cool clouds of plasma that are suspended above the sun's surface by magnetic forces. The yellow areas in this image denote active regions, where the sun's magnetic field is stronger than the surrounding areas.

Sun-Diving Comet

Image courtesy SOHO/ESA/NASA

A composite picture shows three simultaneous views of the sun's upper atmosphere, or corona, in 1996. The innermost image reveals the lower corona surrounding the solar orb. The middle region shows coronal material flowing away from the sun to form the solar wind.

In the final piece, the bright solar disk is blocked out by an instrument called a coronagraph to reveal fine detail in the upper corona as it extends into space. The sungrazer comet SOHO-6, which eventually plunged into the sun, is also visible as a bright streak in the lower left side of the frame.

Coronal Helix

Image courtesy SOHO/ESA/NASA

An unusual helix-shaped coronal mass ejection was observed by a NASA spacecraft in June 1998. The main body of the sun—outlined in white—is blocked by a coronagraph.

Coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, are mammoth clouds of charged particles that get hurled through the sun's atmosphere at millions of miles an hour. A CME contains billions of tons of charged particles and can expand until it's larger than the sun itself.

Seismic Star

Diagram courtesy SOHO/ESA/NASA

The solar equivalent of seismic waves ripple outward from a central point in a series of 1996 pictures from a NASA satellite. The images showed for the first time that solar flares produce waves of energy on the sun's surface that closely resemble the waves created by earthquakes on our planet.

However, the flare—generated "sunquake" contained about 40,000 times the energy released by the great earthquake that rocked San Francisco in 1906.

Sun Snake

A solar filament snakes around the sun in a December 2010 picture taken by a NASA satellite. The filament was more than 620,000 miles (a million kilometers) long—more than half as wide as the sun—and was visible for more than two weeks before it rotated out of view.

Solar filaments are not very stable and often break away from the sun, releasing plasma clouds that eventually dissipate in space.