Spacecraft Sees Solar Storm Engulf Earth

This is pretty amazing video:

Story & Video

August 18, 2011: For the first time, a spacecraft far from Earth has turned and watched a solar storm engulf our planet. The movie, released today during a NASA press conference, has galvanized solar physicists, who say it could lead to important advances in space weather forecasting.

“The movie sent chills down my spine,” says Craig DeForest of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "It shows a CME swelling into an enormous wall of plasma and then washing over the tiny blue speck of Earth where we live. I felt very small.”

Interesting to see the Solar Wind Density gauge max out.

Cant find a link to the NASA site the video's take an age to load up.

Just shows how big it is compared to our earth though....

They were awfully vague on why it took 3 years to make that very short movie..something smells off...

Originally posted by roughycannon
Cant find a link to the NASA site the video's take an age to load up.

Just shows how big it is compared to our earth though....

Youtube Link

reply to post by Stovokor


Something to do with separating out the background interference. Plus, you have to be pointed there when one happens. It's 3 years of trying different methods, not 3 years to make this recording.

When CMEs first leave the sun, they are bright and easy to see. Visibility is quickly reduced, however, as the clouds expand into the void. By the time a typical CME crosses the orbit of Venus, it is a billion times fainter than the surface of the full Moon, and more than a thousand times fainter than the Milky Way. CMEs that reach Earth are almost as gossamer as vacuum itself and correspondingly transparent.

“Pulling these faint clouds out of the confusion of starlight and interplanetary dust has been an enormous challenge,” says DeForest.
Indeed, it took almost three years for his team to learn how to do it.