Researchers captured a magnificent coronal mass ejection (CME) that blasted off the side of the Sun.
The event occurred on May 9, 2014; it was caught on tape by NASA's solar observatory, a NASA news release reported.
The CME is the first to be captured by the new Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) that was launched in June of 2013. The craft caught the solar eruption, that blasted away from the Sun at a speed of 1.5 million miles per hour.
IRIS is devoted to capturing high-definition images of the Sun's lower levels.
IRIS decides where it will point on the face of the Sun about a day in advance, so catching a CME like this one takes careful planning and predictions.
"We focus in on active regions to try to see a flare or a CME," said Bart De Pontieu, the IRIS science lead at Lockheed Martin Solar & Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo Alto, California. "And then we wait and hope that we'll catch something. This is the first clear CME for IRIS so the team is very excited."
The image looks at material that is "30,000 kelvins at the base" of the CME.
"The line moving across the middle of the movie is the entrance slit for IRIS's spectrograph, an instrument that can split light into its many wavelengths - a technique that ultimately allows scientists to measure temperature, velocity and density of the solar material behind the slit," the news release reported.
The field of vision for the craft is a massive five Earth wide, even-and-a-half Earth tall view.
"Lockheed Martin Solar & Astrophysics Laboratory designed the IRIS Observatory and manages the mission. NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, provides mission operations and ground data systems. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the Explorers Program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C," the news release reported.
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