A coronal mass ejection (CME) burst off the side of the solar furnace on May 9, 2014, and became the first CME observed by NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS). According to NASA, CMEs are large bubbles of gas threaded with magnetic field lines that are ejected from the Sun over the course of several hours.
Spotting a CME as it surges off the side of the Sun is no easy task for IRIS, as the spacecraft must commit to pointing at certain regions of the Sun at least a day prior to doing so.
"We focus in on active regions to try to see a flare or a CME," explained Bart De Pontieu, the IRIS science lead at Lockheed Martin Solar & Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo Alto, California. "And then we wait and hope that we'll catch something. This is the first clear CME for IRIS so the team is very excited."
Amazingly, the video below captures an area that is approximately 7.5 Earths wide and approximately five Earths tall.
Nearly 400,000 people have seen this video.
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Source : http://thespacereporter.com/2014/06/watch-solar-material-erupt-outward-at-speeds-of-1-5-million-miles-per-hour-video/
