Unprecedented solar eruption filmed by NASA

A gigantic solar eruption, the likes of which has never been seen before, was captured in video from NASA’s Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, otherwise known as IRIS, a solar observatory that travels around Earth in a polar orbit.
The coronal mass ejection (CME) measured approximately five Earths wide and about 7 1/2 Earths tall, sending a stream of charged particles and hot plasma away from the sun at up to 1.5 million mph.
The solar eruption occurred on May 9, but video released by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center last week is just starting to gain online attention:Space.com explained that coronal mass ejections occur when the sun’s twisting magnetic field lines become so warped that they snap and break like an over-stretched rubber band. They occur as many as five times on a given day, “but IRIS can only peer at 1 percent of the sun at a time, meaning its chances of catching a CME are relatively low.”

The IRIS solar observatory was launched into space on June 27, 2013 as part of a $120 million mission.