Tonight, Americans will celebrate their freedom by watching exploding balls of gunpowder and various colorful chemicals shooting through the sky. Impressive as that may be, Nature is always one up on us. The sun is a mass of incandescent plasma with a constantly roiling surface and a chaotic temperament. Somewhat unpredictably, it seethes and produces enormous explosions known as solar flares or coronal mass ejections (CME). Though similar, these aren’t the same thing: A flare happens when the sun’s surface releases a huge energetic burst, typically producing the energy equivalent of ten million volcanic eruptions. A CME, on the other hand, is an explosion of charged particles shooting from the sun at average speeds of 1.8 million kilometers per hour (kmh), potentially damaging satellites or even power lines on Earth. CMEs often, though not always, follow a solar flare, and figuring out exactly how both phenomena work is a major challenge in heliophysics. Though both flares and CMEs can happen at any time, they tend to occur most often during the peak of the sun’s natural cycle. The sun changes from less active to more active over periods of roughly 11 years. During solar minimum, the least active times, sunspots disappear and major events are rare. During solar maximum, a period we are entering now, the sun’s surface is dotted in sunspots and flares and CMEs occur more frequently. But make no mistake – both periods, max and min, present their own dangers to people and objects in space. The most recent solar maximum happened in 2000. If you paid attention to the last paragraph, you might think that means another solar max was due in 2011. Even NASA scientists thought so. But, for unknown reasons, the sun remained very quiet. The most recent data suggest solar max is happening this summer but no one is really sure. In any case, this solar max appears to be one of the quietest in the last century. But that doesn’t mean solar flare and CMEs have been completely absent. With the 4th of July as an excuse, we will take a look at some of the sun’s most impressive combustions over the last few years, learn a little science, and hopefully gain an appreciation for the awesome power of our parent star. Above: Blam! A beautiful CME shoots out of the sun at more than 5 million kmh on Aug. 31, 2012. This particular eruption hit Earth a few days later, creating spectacular auroras when charged particles interacted with our planet’s magnetic field. Image: NASA/SDO

Wow You’re going to look at a lot of photos in this gallery and think, “What? I’ve never seen the sun that color before.” First of all, stop staring at the sun. Secondly, though we humans perceive the sun as yellow, that’s because its radiation peaks in the yellow part of the electromagnetic spectrum. But the sun is actually producing tons of light at all wavelengths, including many that our eyes can’t see (which is why looking at the sun will burn your eyes). Our fleet of sun-watching satellites, though, can detect light at a wide variety of wavelengths. The data they return help scientists study all aspects of the sun. Much like different colored fireworks, the images these satellites produce are also beautiful to look at. Image: NASA/SDO/Goddard Space Flight Center

Ahhh! Neither a flare nor a CME, this prominence erupted from the sun’s surface on Dec. 31, 2012 but didn’t have quite enough energy to break away. It fell back to the bubbling surface after extending nearly 260,000 km outward. To give you a sense of how massive this thing was, the Earth is shown here to scale (and this was a fairly small prominence). Image: NASA/SDO

Oooh This is what a solar explosion looks like from behind. On Mar. 5, 2013, a large CME burst from the side of the sun facing away from Earth. The charged particles were sent away from us, but were blasted in the direction of Mars. Venus appears as a bright spot in the lower right side of this animation. Image: SOHO

Crackle This composite image shows all the sun’s activity between April 2012 and 2013. As the sun ramped up toward its solar max period, certain areas showed higher activity than others, which can easily be seen in these 25 superimposed images. Image: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO/S. Wiessinger

Huh? A million-kilometer-long filament erupts from the lower left of sun in this image from Dec. 6, 2010. That the prominence snakes along more than half the sun’s face is not the weirdest part of the picture. Rather, it’s the bizarre alien colors of the sun, resulting from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory snapping the photo in extreme ultraviolet wavelengths to best study the filament’s details. Image: NASA/SDO

Flash This dramatic flourishing prominence appeared on the sun in April of 2010. It was among the largest such filaments ever seen by NASA and ESA’s fleet of sun-watching satellites. Image: NASA/STEREO

Fwoosh A complex strand of plasma escaped the sun’s surface on Jan. 31, 2013. Clever NASA scientists decided to call it a ‘dragon tail filament’ because that’s what it looks like. Image: NASA/SDO

Bang! In May, the sun unleashed three enormous X-class flares one after the other. X-class flares represent the most energetic category of flare. Below: An animation of most intense flare ever seen, which erupted in 2003. Images: 1) NASA/SDO/AIA 2) ESA

Whomp A hundred-million-ton prominence jetted from the sun on Apr. 19, 2010 and hung above its surface for a while, trapped in solar magnetic fields. Lacking the energy to depart, the prominence fell back to the surface in a dramatic crash. There appears to be a dark hovering line in this animation, resulting either from some overexposed pixels in the camera or an enormous floating space dragon sucking energy from the sun (but most likely the former). NASA/SDO

Splash A solar eruption on June 7, 2011 blasted material outward, some of which then splashed down on the surface. Such a splashdown event has rarely been seen and was captured here by the Solar Dynamics Observatory. An awesome close-up of the fiery blobs hitting the splash zone can be seen below. Images: NASA / SDO / P. Testa(CfA)

Shoom An exquisite CME shot out of the sun in May, producing this swirling round mass of particles seen by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Images: NASA/SDO

WTF? Sometimes the sun produced such strange events that no mere mortal fireworks could ever hope to top them. This gigantic solar tornado, which whipped around the sun’s surface in September 2011, is a case in point. The tornado is big enough to swallow five Earths and made up of superheated gas at a temperature of between 90,000 and 3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit. This phenomenon is thought to precede CMEs. Images: NASA/SDO/AIA/Aberystwyth University/Li/Morgan/Leonard