A new video from a sun-watching spacecraft shows just how much our star has woken up in the last three years.
The video gives a side-by-side comparison of footage shot exactly three years apart by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
(SOHO), a joint NASA-European Space Agency probe.
On the left is the quescient sun of Aug. 4-10, 2009. On the right: the raging star of a few weeks ago, which blasts out big flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — huge eruptions of solar plasma — with startling frequency.
Solar activity waxes and wanes on an 11-year cycle. Back in 2009, the sun was at a low ebb of the current Solar Cycle 24. But our star is now ramping up toward a predicted activity peak in 2013, experts say.
Fox News has the full article
