As Pan-STARRS makes its ways into view, a coronal mass ejection (CME) — an explosion of plasma from the surface of the star — shoots towards Earth. The outer solar atmosphere, the corona, is structured by strong magnetic fields. A coronal mass ejection on Feb. 27, 2000 taken by SOHO LASCO C2 and C3. The coils arcing over this active region are particles spiraling along magnetic field lines. Baker, along with colleagues from NASA and other universities, published a seminal study of the storm in the December 2013 issue of the journal Space Weather.. Their paper, entitled "A major solar eruptive event in July 2012," describes how a powerful coronal mass … Although the Sun's corona has been observed during total eclipses of the Sun for thousands of years, the existence of coronal mass ejections was unrealized until the space age. Comet ATLAS facing Earth at perihelion When Comet ATLAS Y4 approaches perihelion and just before that (when it crosses the ecliptic around May 31st), it will be aligned with Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. They’re also by far the most dangerous. This is called a coronal mass ejection (CME). Read about Coronal Mass Ejection by Granddaddy DJ and see the artwork, lyrics and similar artists. Coronal Mass Ejections Coronal mass ejections (or CMEs) are huge bubbles of gas threaded with magnetic field lines that are ejected from the Sun over the course of several hours. CMEs are the slowest form of solar weather, taking anywhere from 12 hours to several days to reach the Earth. Credit: SOHO ESA & NASA. A CME blasts into space a billion tons of particles traveling millions of miles an hour. The flare lasted almost two hours, quite a long duration. A medium-sized (M2) solar flare and a coronal mass ejection erupted from the same, large active region of the sun on July 14, 2017.