In today's image, we see a solar filament which erupted into a coronal mass ejection on the Sun back in 2012. The Sun has a cycle of activity that lasts about 11 years and is near the peak of that activity cycle again right now. So, we are seeing more events like this which cause aurora here on Earth like those we saw a couple of weeks ago.

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This Podcast is an authorized New Media Mirror Site for APOD. You can access the image and website directly at: Astronomy Picture of the Day. You can use the archive link below the image to select the photo corresponding to the date of this podcast.

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