Giant Filament Staring at Earth

High above the solar surface in the hot million+ C solar corona sits a giant filament of cooler (~50,000 C), denser material, both supported and restrained by solar magnetic fields.
bbso_halph_fd_20140804_234002Filaments

If this filament should become unstable as they sometimes do it could erupt away from the sun creating a coronal mass ejection (CME) that might head our way. We will have to wait and see if this structure will remain stable or head away from the sun. If it heads our way as a CME it could potentially provide some beautiful aurora.
GiantFilament-Aug42014.001
The filament is a mind boggling 3 Jupiter diameters or 33 Earth diameters or 419,000 km or 260,000 miles long. credit: NASA/SDO/helioviewer/solarmonitor.org