Video: Huge Coronal Mass Ejection Slammed Into Earth Today. Sun Activity ++

On Tuesday evening, a curmudgeonly old Sun decided to erupt in a violent solar flare. Ole sumbitch Sun has been acting up for a while now. Early this morning, the Solar Puke smashed into our Earth’s atmosphere.

Hit the jump for videos of the ejection and some deets. It’s swoon.

io9:

The coronal mass ejection (CME) arrived this morning at approximately 5:45 EST. In the picture up top you can see Tuesday night’s flare depicted by the conspicuously bright orange region on the upper left [Hi res available here; and definitely check out the video below of Tuesday night’s burst].

NOAA reports that the Sun’s upsurge was categorized as an X5.4, which means it’s not only the second largest flare we’ve witnessed since 2007, it’s also much more violent than the solar storm that had us canceling plane flights and keeping an eye out for low-latitude aurorae  back in January.

According to SpaceWeather.com it’s still too early to tell what kind of geomagnetic storms the particles’ 4-million-mph collision with our atmosphere may trigger. NOAA says that “so far, the orientation of the magnetic field has been the opposite of what is needed” to cause the strongest storms. But that field, the Administration cautions, will continue to change, and earlier predictions that storms could reach the G3 level still “look justified.”