Solar flare: spectacular eruption on the sun

The Huffington Post:

Yesterday morning, a massive eruption occurred on the sun, producing a solar flare and explosion of high energy particles.

NASA later released footage of the spectacle, described by the Geeked on Goddard blog as being "like a fountain of plasma that blasts out of the solar surface, spreads outward, and collapses to splat back down." The video shows darker, relatively cool material splashing back onto the sun's surface as it's drawn in by the star's intense magnetic pull.

For anyone concerned about the potential radiation that occurs from a natural occurrence of the sort, the Atlantic Wire reports that because of the sun's current positioning, the radiation should not have a significant effect when it reaches the earth Wednesday or Thursday.

As NASA scientist C. Alex Young put it, "It's not necessarily anything spectacular as far as space weather ... it's just really, really beautiful."