Is it fair to describe a solar flare as a big lightning strike on the sun?
ProfRob gives a more detailed explanation of what a solar flare is in his answer to &quot;What triggers a solar flare?&quot; It helps a lot in distinguishing between CME's, eruptions, prominences and solar flares. There is a lot of confusion, even among space enthusiasts, between these phenomena. This is largely because images of prominences and CMEs always seem to be labeled as solar flares. This has been confusing to me, too. A solar flare might be associated with a large eruption of matter, but that is secondary, and the primary feature of a solar flare is plasma being suddenly moved from one location to another by magnetic reconnection, causing it to collide at relativistic speeds with the chromosphere and photosphere, producing the intense light and x-rays seen from earth. Unlike lightning, a solar flare is not an electrostatic discharge. A solar flare is like lightning in the sense that there is a near light-speed flow of charged particles that result in the emission of bright electromagnetic energy, spanning the entire spectrum from radio to gamma waves.