Solar Flares

It's snowing here today, but this is something to make everyone think warm thoughts...solar flares. I had never heard of these but apparently they are happening often...explosions of magnetic energy from the solar atmosphere. We went to the planetarium recently and saw some images such as these of the sun. Really never thought much about what the sun looks like on its surface or within (that's right, they showed us inside the sun too.) This will make you think with a different point of view. I appreciate the simple joy of feeling warmth from the sun, now I understand more of where this comes from. This is also what makes it possible to see the northern lights if you are in the northern parts of the world to view this colorful light show of nature. If you want to learn more, you can view the sun with NASA at http://sdo.gfsc.nasa.gov or read about space weather at http://www.spaceweather.com. There are more great images at http://www.space.com.