Uploaded October 2013 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

---

On September 29/30, 2013, a huge explosion of magnetic energy lifted megatons of hydrogen off the Sun's surface in this video of an eruptive filament, using footage from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. The arch was 300,000 km across!

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO
Notes by Phil Plait
Oriignal hi-res video: svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011300/a011379