NASA's SDO Offers First Sightings of CME Formation; Scientists Hope to Predict 'Amazing' Solar Structures

Solar flare eruptions, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), have provided scenic images for NASA but a moment back in July brought the organization to inspect it further.

On July 18, 2012, the magnetic lines of the corona began to "twist and kink" which led to the hottest solar material to form. The material is known to be a charged gas called plasma.

"The plasma glowed brightly in extreme ultraviolet images from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) aboard NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and scientists were able to watch for the first time the very formation of something they had long theorized was at the heart of many eruptive events on the sun: a flux rope," NASA stated.

A day later, a flare ignited on the same region as July 18, severing the flux rope of the sun and magnetic fields escaping into space causing billions of solar material to disperse.

Two theories have been set up based on general physics of plasmas and magnetic fields and when the flux rope might form:

1. The magnetic structure of the rope exists before the CME, and as it evolves over time it twists and kinks becoming increasingly unstable. Eventually it erupts from the sun, releasing enormous amounts of energy and solar plasma.

2. The CME erupts when looping magnetic field lines are severed from the sun's surface. While the great blob of solar material streams off the sun, the fields reconnect with each other to form a classic flux rope shape.

"Seeing this structure was amazing," said Naval Research Laboratory Solar Scientist Angelos Vourlidas. "It looks exactly like the cartoon sketches theorists have been drawing of flux ropes since the 1970s. It was a series of figure eights lined up to look like a giant slinky on the sun."

Scientists have been trying to predict when a CME happens, with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center's Project Scientist for SDO Dean Pesnill stating, "By telling us when and where flux ropes will erupt, SDO helps us predict a major source of space weather."

According to Vourlidas, analyzing the eruption was needed, by the minutes, then an hour, then eight hours. And then they saw it.

"A flux rope that looked just like the cartoons scientists have been drawing for decades," said Vourlidas.

Vourlidas added that images from NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) also helped with analyzing the CME.