NASA recently unveiled the first pictures and video taken by its February-launched Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)’s suite of instruments, which were exclusively designed for illustrating the full range of the Sun’s magnetic activity in unparalleled detail.

The SDA witnessed one of its first events in March – a colossal loop of material shooting up from the surface of the Sun. The loop, called prominence eruption, resulted from a fairly cold plasma cloud, or charged gas, remotely tethered to the sun’s surface by magnetic forces.

With the new satellite images being unveiled, Richard Fisher, NASA's director of heliophysics, said at a press conference: “We are all living in the outer atmosphere of a star. Its variability influences Earth, the other planets, and the whole solar system.”

Citing an example, Fisher said strong solar eruptions, known as coronal mass ejections, can send bursts of charged particles heading for the Earth. These particles have the potential of overloading the magnetic shield of the Earth; thereby having a knock out effect on satellite communications as well as power grids.

Noting that the first-ever high-resolution close-ups of the Sun’s surface, via the ‘breakthrough’ images, will help scientists forecast solar storms, NASA scientist Dr. Madhulika Guhathakurta said: “The question is can we understand what the sun is doing and can we predict it and I think we're going to get a lot smarter in that area.”