Watch two plumes of ‘dark’ plasma explode from the sun and send solar storm towards Earth (video)

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Watch two plumes of ‘dark’ plasma explode from the sun and send solar storm towards Earth (video)


Two loops of “dark” plasma exploded from the sun yesterday (July 21), and a NASA spacecraft caught it on video. 

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) watched as two loops of cool, dense plasma erupted from the sun’s surface, looking eerily similar to a pair of dementors from Harry Potter hovering over the sun. 

However, instead of soul-sucking mythical creatures, these blackish loops of plasma are are actually the beginning stages of a coronal mass ejection (CME), which are quite the magnetic mess that can create solar storms that impact Earth.

A close-up of a plasma eruption on the surface of the sun. (Image credit: NASA/SDO)

In the sped-up video, you can see two wispy black plumes of plasma launched from sunspot AR3757 on Sunday along with a M1-class solar flare. These active sunspot regions can spew electromagnetic energy from the sun’s corona at any given moment and as these plumes navigate away from the sun’s atmosphere, they collect more and more plasma that eventually consolidate into a CME’s most inner makings. 

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