Breathtaking images of a violent solar flare and the beautiful aurora it created on Earth

Wow these pictures are breathtaking to say the very least. Nasa today released stunning video showing a 500,000 mile long 'solar whip' on the surface of the sun - and the beautiful aurora it created on earth. Captured by from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), the images show in unprecedented detail a very long, whip-like solar filament extending over half a million miles in a long arc above the sun’s surface. This incredible phenomenon might give us insight into why solar eruptions disrupt electrical supply here on Earth.

The coronal mass ejection, or CME, traveled at over 900 miles per second. The CME did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth's magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, with a glancing blow, causing aurora to appear on monday evening.

A 'solar whip' or filament is caused when a red glowing loop of plasma erupts, releasing the plasma out in huge loops hundreds of thousands of miles into space. The filaments are anchored to the Sun's surface in the photosphere, andextend outwards into the Sun's hot outer atmosphere, called the corona. The 'whip' was a filament, cooler clouds of solar material that are tethered above the sun’s surface by unstable magnetic forces.

The images and video (below), which covers August 6 to 8, 2012 show the filament as a darker strand that has been in view for several days. It the snaps, sending radiation hurtling towards earth. At the time, Nasa revealed a video of the activity. 'Towards the end of the video part of the filament seems to break away, but its basic length and shape seem to have remained mostly intact,' says Nasa.

The video, which condenses three hours of activity, also reveals the action in dramatic detail in extreme ultraviolet light. The NOAA space weather prediction center warned that a cloud of radiation from the eruption would reach Earth today.The radiation cloud will create a minor to moderate geomagnetic storm, bringing the northern lights to parts of North America, it said.

To prove the point, Nasa today revealed the image below, showing the aurora in breathtaking beauty.

Nasa says the image is a classic example of a solar prominence (also known as a filament when viewed against the solar disk). This is a large, bright feature extending outward from the Sun's surface. Prominences are anchored to the Sun's surface in the photosphere, and extend outwards into the Sun's hot outer atmosphere, called the corona. A prominence forms over timescales of about a day, and stable prominences may persist in the corona for several months, looping hundreds of thousands of miles into space.

However, scientists are still researching how and why prominences are formed. The red-glowing looped material is plasma, a hot gas comprised of electrically charged hydrogen and helium. The prominence plasma flows along a tangled and twisted structure of magnetic fields generated by the sun’s internal dynamo.

An erupting prominence occurs when such a structure becomes unstable and bursts outward, releasing the plasma.