Spectacular and rare images were captured last month by NASA’s solar observation satellite – the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, better known as IRIS. The footage captured an eruption of solar material surging out from the sun, more technically known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), which happens when huge clouds of superheated particles are emitted from the corona of the sun - the outermost and hottest layer - and can reach speeds in excess of one million miles per hour. The recording of such images requires a degree of luck as the IRIS has to be set up to point at the sun in advance and then plays a waiting game to capture any events that may occur. To give you an idea of the magnitude of the event, the field of vision seen in this footage is a width of about five times that of planet Earth and over seven times its height. Quite spectacular.
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