Large Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) Blasting In The Direction Of Earth

The joint NASA/ESA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), sitting at the L1 point between the Earth and the sun, has spotted a large coronal mass ejection (CME) blasting in the direction of Earth.

While not an unusually massive eruption, the blast was at the same time as another phenomenon on the sun, called a ‘filament’, occurred, not far from the location CME.

The combination of these events led to a huge magnetic bubble of plasma being blasted into space from the sun. As the eruption was on the Earth-facing side of the sun, the CME is heading right for Earth and can expected to arrival on August 3rd, 2010.

While news.discovery.com doesn’t want you to panic, I find this whole thing a bit unnerving.

The choppy video below shows the C3-class solar flare originating from sunspot 1092 on the surface of the Sun on August 1, 2010.