By Ellie Zolfagharifard Nasa’s latest solar observatory has captured footage of the sun belching out a stream of charged particles at 1.5 million miles per hour. The curtain of radiation, which erupted on May 9, was the first coronal mass ejection (CME) observed by the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or Iris. The footage reveals the CME in ‘extraordinary detail’ showing a field of view about five Earths wide and seven-and-a-half Earths tall. Scroll down for video The line moving across the middle of the animation is the entrance slit for Iris’ spectrograph, an instrument that can split light into its many wavelengths – a technique that ultimately allows scientists to measure temperature, velocity and density of the solar material behind the slit
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The huge curtain of solar radiation erupted on May 9 but didn't affect Earth
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It was the first ever coronal mass ejection (CME) observed by the Iris probe
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During a CME, changes in sun’s magnetic fields can cause a section of the solar surface to expand, ejecting billions of tonnes of particles into space
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CMEs can disrupt communication signals and cause surges in power grids
The charged particles can also threaten airlines by disturbing the @placeholder’s magnetic field.
By capturing light emitted by atoms of different temperatures, @placeholder can look at different heights above the sun's surface to analyse this obscure layer