Fairy 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 AlA 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.