Intense Solar Eruption Captured by NASA SDO Spacecraft - Video

A huge tendril of super-hot plasma that had been creeping across the face of the sun erupted Tuesday (Sept. 2) in a striking solar storm that may send a wave of charged particles in Earth's direction.

Video of the solar eruption captured by NASA's sun-watching Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows a cloud of solar plasma being hurled from the sun's surface during the rippling blast.

Debris from the solar explosion could be traveling in the direction of Earth, according to Spaceweather.com, which tracks stargazing and space weather events.

Further observations should confirm whether the eruption was actually an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection, or CME.

CMEs occur when the sun's magnetic field lines become so warped that they snap like rubber bands then reconnect at other points.

These breaks can leave gaps where the sun's plasma spews into space.

CMEs can occasionally spark geomagnetic storms when they collide with Earth.

These disturbances can interfere with electronics, cause radio blackouts and produce stunning auroras.

In the days before the eruption, the filament of dark plasma looked like a long shadow on the sun that stretched some 372,823 miles (600,000 kilometers), that's more than three times the diameter of Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system.

Amateur astrophotographers from around the world had been sending Spaceweather.com amazing amazing images of the filament over the past few days.

Iceland Rocked by Thousands of intense earthquakes

This is a Saturday May 8 2010 file image taken from video of a column of ash rising from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokul volcano. 

It was reported Tueday Aug. 19, 2014 that thousands of small intense earthquakes are rocking Iceland amid concerns that one of the country's volcanoes may be close to erupting. 

Iceland has raised its aviation alert level for the risk of a possible volcanic eruption to orange, the second-most severe level. 

The alert is worrisome because of the chaos that followed the April 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajokul, when more than 100,000 flights were cancelled because volcanic ash floating in the atmosphere is considered an aviation safety hazard. 

Credit: AP Photo/ APTN

Thousands of small intense earthquakes are rocking Iceland amid concerns that one of the country's volcanoes may be close to erupting.

Iceland has raised its aviation alert level for the risk of a possible volcanic eruption to orange—the second-most severe level.

The alert is worrisome because of the chaos that followed the April 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajokul, when more than 100,000 flights were cancelled because volcanic ash floating in the atmosphere is considered an aviation safety hazard.

Some 3,000 earthquakes have taken place since Saturday in Bárðarbunga (pronounced [b'aurðarbuŋka]), a subglacial stratovolcano located under Iceland's largest glacier.

Iceland's Meteorological Office said that no earthquakes above magnitude 3 have been recorded in the last 24 hours.

Seismologists said Tuesday magma is moving, but it is traveling horizontally.