Heliophysics is pretty damn cool.
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this amazing footage of the sun's coronal loops spiralling from the edge last week.
A coronal loop is, basically, a magnetic arc from one point on the sun's surface to another, often occurring after a solar flare or surface eruption. Particles racing along the magnetic line is what makes them visible to our telescopes.
This particular set of coronal loops were captured after an M-class solar flare - the third-highest class - as the sun is at its peak of 11-year solar cycles, meaning it's more active than usual.
Solar activity also resulted in a striking photo from the Solar Dynamics Observatory earlier this month, when a series of sunspots in just the right arrangement produced an eerie "face" across the surface of the sun, reminding many observers of a jack-o'-lantern in the weeks before Halloween.
These images are usually captured in ultraviolet - which the human eye can't see - along with several other wavelengths of light, and then combined and colour-corrected to give us an idea of what's going on.