New Year's Eve Eruption on the Sun

From the blog Hogewash:

A solar eruption rose up from the sun on New Year’s Eve. Magnetic forces drove the flow of plasma, but without sufficient force to overcome the sun’s gravity much of the plasma fell back into the sun.

The length of the eruption extended about 160,000 miles from the Sun. The Earth is about 7,900 miles in diameter, so this relatively minor eruption is about 20 times the diameter of our planet.

Image Credit: NASA

http://hogewash.com/2013/01/08/a-solar-eruption/