NASA spacecraft captured two prominent eruptions of super-hot plasma that was continuously emitted by the sun over a four-hour period on Friday.
The giant sun eruption, which occurred at 1 am EST (0600 GMT) and was followed by a second one, was captured in the 304 Angstrom wavelength of extreme ultraviolet lights by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory.
The eruption, known as solar prominence, was so large that it expanded beyond the camera view of Solar Dynamics Observatory, Space.com reported.
The 58-second video showed a giant loop of glowing red plasma, a hot gas made of electrically charged hydrogen and helium, erupting from the lower left of the sun and blasting away from it.
"The red-glowing looped material is plasma, a hot gas made of electrically charged hydrogen and helium. The prominence plasma flows along a tangled and twisted structure of magnetic fields generated by the sun's internal dynamo. An erupting prominence occurs when such a structure becomes unstable and bursts outward, releasing the plasma," officials with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center explained.
"It seems possible that the disruption to the Sun's magnetic field might have triggered the second event since they were in relatively close proximity to each other," said the space agency.
The solar eruption heading into space does not appear to be Earth-directed.
