Washington:
NASA scientists have captured video images of a massive explosion that erupted from the edge of the Sun on Wednesday using its Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite.
The explosion, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), can shoot over a billion tons of particles into space at more than 1.6 million kilometres per hour, NASA said.
The CME occurred on the Sun's limb and is not headed toward Earth and the particles in a gigantic rolling wave shot into space are headed in a different direction.
The outer solar atmosphere, the corona, is structured by strong magnetic fields.
Where these fields are closed, often above sunspot groups, the confined solar atmosphere can suddenly and violently release bubbles of gas and magnetic fields called coronal mass ejections.
The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), launched on February 11, 2010, is a NASA mission which will observe the Sun for over five years.