The Moon Swings in Front of the Sun. Then the Sun Belches.

The clockwork motion of the heavens has brought us another treat: The dark silhouetted Moon sliding across the fiery disk of the Sun, as seen from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory just hours ago: SDO orbits the Earth, staring at the Sun 24/7. Every now and again the geometry lines up such that the Moon appears to move in front of the Sun, creating what astronomers call a transit (on Earth we'd call these solar eclipses). They usually last for a half hour or so, but this one lasted 2.5 hours! Th...