On August 31, 2012 a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth’s magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, causing aurora to appear on the night of Monday, September 3. The incredible image above is a lighten blended version of the 304 and 171 angstrom wavelengths. [Source: NASA]

Now check out some amazing close-ups below (the last image shows relative size of Earth). These are three images in an 11 picture/video album on Flickr. Be sure to check it out here.