Every now and then the Sun blasts out HUGE amounts of material from its atmosphere (like a giant belch!). We call these Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). A large CME can be made up of almost 10 thousand million tonnes of material and can move at speeds of up to 450 km/s.
Imagine you had 10 thousand million tonnes of snow - you could cover the whole of Britain to a depth of 30 cm. Imagine the size of the snowman you could make with that!
Windy Space
There is a constant stream of plasma coming from the Sun. We call this the solar wind. CMEs add a lot of material to the solar wind.
Have a look at Jude's
section to find more out about the solar wind.
