After many large and interesting events yesterday, the Sun produced this spectacular eruptive event late yesterday.

Fast eruption in SDO AIA 171.

This lead to a coronal mass ejection with a speed of around 2200 km/s, one of the fastest we’ve seen in the current solar cycle. Interestingly, this erupted material had a lot of bright emission in the AIA 171 pass band, indicating bright or dense (or both) material at around 1,000,000 K, which whilst not unusual, isn’t too common either. The bright loops remaining at the surface of the Sun are known as post-flare loops.

A high quality version of the above movie can be obtained here.