NASA | Fiery Looping Rain on the Sun

Eruptive events on the sun can be wildly different . Some come just with a solar flare , some with an additional ejection of solar material called a coronal mass ejection ( CME ) , and some with complex moving structures in association with changes in magnetic field lines that loop up into the sun's atmosphere , the corona .

On July 19 , 2012 , an eruption occurred on the sun that produced all three . A moderately powerful solar flare exploded on the sun's lower right hand limb , sending out light and radiation . Next came a CME , which shot off to the right out into space . And then , the sun treated viewers to one of its dazzling magnetic displays -- a phenomenon known as coronal rain .

Over the course of the next day , hot plasma in the corona cooled and condensed along strong magnetic fields in the region . Magnetic fields , themselves , are invisible , but the charged plasma is forced to move along the lines , showing up brightly in the extreme ultraviolet wavelength of 304 Angstroms , which highlights material at a temperature of about 50,000 Kelvin . This plasma acts as a tracer , helping scientists watch the dance of magnetic fields on the sun , outlining the fields as it slowly falls back to the solar surface .
The footage in this video was collected by the Solar Dynamics Observatory's AIA instrument . SDO collected one frame every 12 seconds , and the movie plays at 30 frames per second , so each second in this video corresponds to 6 minutes of real time . The video covers 12:30 a.m. EDT to 10:00 p.m. EDT on July 19 , 2012 .