Sundiving comet and coronal mass ejection
Image credit: TW
A comet dove into the sun on May 11th and seemed to trigger a massive eruption. Watch the movie, then scroll down for further discussion.
A comet goes in; a CME comes out. Coincidence? Probably, yes, the sequence was coincidental. The comet disintegrated as much as a million kilometers above the stellar surface. There's no known way that the wispy, vaporous remains of a relatively lightweight comet could cause a billion-ton cloud of hot plasma to fly away from the sun at 400 km/s (the observed speed of the CME). Moreover, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory photographed the eruption that did propel the CME into space. There's no comet in the field of view of this must-see movie.
TTB commented on The Watchers:
Interesting to me that you can still see the tail continue, even after the explosion.