PIA19878: Tangled up in Blue
A small, but complex mass of plasma gyrated and spun about over the course of 40 hours above the surface of the Sun taken by NASA's GSFC Solar Dynamics Observatory on Sept. 1-3, 2015.
 Target Name:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  SDO 
 Instrument:  Atmosphere Imaging Assembly 
 Product Size:  720 x 720 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  SDO 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA19878.tif (1.556 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA19878.jpg (84.17 kB)  

Click on image above for all movie download options

Original Caption Released with Image:

A small, but complex mass of plasma gyrated and spun about over the course of 40 hours above the surface of the Sun (Sept. 1-3, 2015). It was stretched and pulled back and forth by powerful magnetic forces but not ripped apart in this sequence. The temperature of the ionized iron particles observed in this extreme ultraviolet wavelength of light was about 2.8 million degrees C. (or 5 million degrees F.)

Movies
PIA19878_Blue_chunk_big.mp4
PIA19878_Blue_chunk_sm.mp4

SDO is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Its Atmosphere Imaging Assembly was built by the Lockheed Martin Solar Astrophysics Laboratory (LMSAL), Palo Alto, California.

Image Credit:
NASA/GSFC/Solar Dynamics Observatory

Image Addition Date:
2015-09-02