See blazing solar material do the twist over the sun's surface
Get up close with some dramatic sun activity as NASA zooms in on a fascinating solar happening.
Don't look directly at the sun. We've been hearing that piece of advice since we were children, but it doesn't apply to NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. The SDO's entire job consists of staring at the sun. NASA released a video on Monday giving us a dramatic close look at a twist of solar material dancing across the sun.
The writhing tail of material is part of a filament, a phenomenon NASA describes as "long, unstable clouds of solar material suspended above the sun's surface by magnetic forces." The SDO saw the activity in extreme ultraviolet light, which NASA colorized into red for human eyes. The observatory captured the images in early June.
The SDO is prolific when it comes to sun observations. It hit its 100 millionth image milestone in early 2015. The observatory's notable accomplishments include tracking a million-mile-long filament across the sun and turning out some gorgeous 4K footage of solar activity.
