Solar flare close up

On 2 March 2022, a solar flare exploded from the Sun. It was rated as M-class, the fourth highest out of five categories for solar flare intensity. This sequence of images shows the flare as captured by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft. The images were taken at a wavelength of 17 nanometers, which is in the extreme ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum. They reveal the upper atmosphere of the Sun, the corona, where the temperature is around 1 million degrees. The flare itself is the unmistakable white patch that develops and expands rapidly in the final seconds of the video.