February 17, 2011
Long before your first heartbeat, stars were busy forging the elements you would one day call your own.
X-Class Flare
Birthday · February 17, 2011
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
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APOD published February 17, 2011. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
On Valentine's Day (ET) the Sun unleashed one of its most powerful explosions, an X-class flare. The blast was the largest so far in the new solar cycle. Erupting from active region AR1158 in the Sun's southern hemisphere, the flare is captured here in this extreme ultraviolet image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The intense burst of electromagnetic radiation momentarily overwhelmed pixels in SDO's detectors causing the bright vertical blemish. This X-class flare was also accompanied by a coronal mass ejection (CME), a massive cloud of charged particles traveling outward at nearly 900 kilometers per second. Skywatchers at high latitudes should be alert for aurorae tonight.