NASA releases footage of 600,000-mile-long ‘canyon of fire’ shooting out from the sun on Halloween

• An explosion of radiation coming from the sun was captured by NASA’s probe 
• It measured twice as wide as the US and was seen from Mars 
• READ MORE:  NASA spacecraft ‘touches’ the sun for the first time

NASA has released footage showing a massive ‘canyon of fire’ about twice the size of the US shooting out from the sun on Halloween day.

The feature was a tremendous explosion of radiation that measured 6,200 miles wide and 62,000 miles long – large enough for the American Space Agency’s Perseverance rover to see it on Mars, which is 145.59 million miles away.

The plasma ravine was around double the size of the entire United States and 50 times longer than the largest-known crater in our solar system, the Red Planet’s Valles Marineris.

The video shows the filament slowing forming on the sun’s southeastern limb and accelerating until it bursts, releasing electrified gas toward the ‘Earth-strike-zone.’

The clip was captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) on October 30 as it flew by Earth’s massive star.

The culprit is sunspot AR3477, which released an M flare that can cause brief radio blackouts that affect Earth’s polar regions. 

However, EarthSky reports that the sunspot also released eight C flares in the last 24 hours. 

On November 1, AR3477 shot an M1.2 flare that caused radio blackouts over the South Indian Ocean.

And the flare released last month could impact Earth on November 4.

NASA’s probe, SDO, was recently named the fastest artificial object in history.

The craft hit a record speed of 394,736 miles per hour (mph) last month, twice as fast as a bolt of lightning or 200 times the speed of a rifle bullet.

The achievement was made during its 17th sun swing on September 27, breaking its distance record by skimming just 4.51 million from the solar surface. 

SDO launched on August 12, 2018, to study the sun.

In 2021, the probe uncovered the source in the sun, which produces solar energetic particles that threaten crewed spaceflight, near-Earth satellites and airplanes.

A team of US researchers analyzed the composition of particles that flew towards Earth in 2014 and found the same ‘fingerprint’ of plasma located low in the sun’s chromosphere – its second-most outer layer.

The solar energetic particles are released from the sun at high speed during storms in its atmosphere.

The team behind the new study said the new information could be used to predict better when a major solar storm will hit and act faster to mitigate the risks.