- A blast of radiation from the sun was captured by NASA’s probe
- It was twice as wide as the US and was seen from Mars
- READ MORE: NASA spacecraft ‘touches’ the sun for the first time
NASA has released images of a massive ‘chasm of fire’, about twice the size of the US, shooting out of the sun on Halloween day.
The feature was a massive radiation explosion 6,000 miles wide and 62,000 miles long — big enough for the American Space Agency’s Perseverance rover to see it on Mars, which is 145.59 million miles away.
The plasma canyon was about double the size of the entire United States and 50 times longer than the largest known crater in our solar system, the Red Planet’s Valles Marineris.
The video shows the filament forming more slowly at the sun’s southeastern edge and accelerating until it bursts, releasing electrified gas toward the Earth-strike zone.
NASA has released images of a massive ‘chasm of fire’, about twice the size of the US, shooting out of the sun on Halloween day
The fragment was captured on October 30 by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) as it flew past Earth’s massive star.
The culprit is sunspot AR3477, which produced an M flare that can cause brief radio disturbances affecting Earth’s polar regions.
However, EarthSky reports that the sunspot also produced eight C flares in the past 24 hours.
On November 1, AR3477 fired an M1.2 flare that caused radio blackouts over the southern Indian Ocean.
And the flame released last month could hit Earth on November 4.
NASA’s probe, SDO, was recently declared the fastest man-made object in history.
It was big enough for the American Space Agency’s Perseverance rover to spot it on Mars, which is 145.59 million miles away
Its signature was a massive explosion of radiation that was 10,000 kilometers wide and 100,000 kilometers long.
The craft reached a record speed of 394,736 miles per hour (mph) last month, twice as fast as a bolt of lightning or 200 times the speed of a rifle bullet.
This feat was accomplished during the 17th solar sweep on September 27, breaking the distance record by shaving just 4.51 million off the solar surface.
SDO was launched on August 12, 2018 to study the Sun.
In 2021, the probe discovered the source in the sun, which produces solar energetic particles that threaten human spaceflight, satellites and aircraft near Earth.
A team of American researchers analyzed the composition of particles that flew to Earth in 2014 and found the same ‘fingerprint’ of plasma layer in the Sun’s chromosphere – the second outermost layer.
The solar energetic particles are released from the sun at high speed during storms in the atmosphere.
The team behind the new study said the new information could be used to better predict when a major solar storm will hit and act more quickly to limit risks.