Watch the sun in action: Dazzling footage taken over five years reveals plasma rain, energy bursts and a comet hurtling past
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You might have seen fantastic images of the sun before, or even clips showing its activity - but you've never seen anything like this.
An incredible video has stitched together footage from a Nasa spacecraft, revealed the beauty of the solar surface as it bursts with energy.
Taken over five years, the footage includes plasma raining down on the sun, an extreme solar eruption and even a comet breezing through the sun's atmosphere.
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Filmmaker Michael König from Cologne, Germany has created an amazing video showing solar activity (shown). It was made by stitching together footage from Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory over five years
The movie, called Sun, was created by filmmaker Michael König from Cologne, Germany.
It uses footage recorded by Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft between 2011 and 2015.
'This montage features excerpts of 4K full-disk pictures in extreme ultraviolet channels,' explained Mr König, and it 'offers a glance at spicules, solar flares, filaments and an overview of the sun's atmosphere.'
Highlights of the video include large, bright tendrils extending outward from the sun's surface and occasionally crashing down again - known as solar prominences.
Other fantastic sections show bright, active regions on the sun's surface as magnetic fields send it into turmoil.
Transits of the moon, Venus and Earth across the sun, as observed from the SDO, are also seen, while towards the end of the video Comet Lovejoy can be seen passing the sun in December 2011.
Another incredible part of the video shows 'coronal rain' streaming down onto the sun from a loop of material above the sun's surface.
Coronal rain is formed when hot plasma in the corona - the sun's atmosphere - cools and condenses in strong magnetic fields.
The plasma is attracted to the magnetic fields and condenses, slowly falling back to the solar surface over several hours.
THE SOLAR DYNAMICS OBSERVATORY
Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), illustrated below, was launched on 11 February 2010 and has observed the sun ever since.
It's goal is to understand how exactly the sun interacts with the environment around Earth.
By watching the sun in different wavelengths - and therefore different temperatures - scientists can watch how material courses through the corona, which holds clues to what causes eruptions on the sun, what heats the sun's atmosphere up to 1,000 times hotter than its surface, and why the sun's magnetic fields are constantly on the move.
SDO also measures fluctuations in the sun's extreme ultraviolet output, which provides the majority of energy for heating Earth's upper atmosphere.
Five years into its mission, SDO continues to send back tantalizing imagery to incite scientists' curiosity.
For example, in late 2014, SDO captured imagery of the largest sun spots seen since 1995 as well as a torrent of intense solar flares.
Another incredible part of the video shows 'coronal rain' (pictured) streaming down onto the sun from a loop of material above the sun's surface. Coronal rain is formed when hot plasma in the corona - the sun's atmosphere - condenses and falls back to the surface
Elsewhere, solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are seen erupting on the sun's surface, sending out huge amounts of energy.
CMEs are the huge waves of material that are seen in images of the sun, and they can pose a threat to satellites in Earth orbit.
Solar flares are flashes of energy on the surface of the sun, which are sometimes associated with CMEs - although their connection is not well understood.
The video, though, is a reminder of just how beautiful, powerful and active our solar system's only star can be.
By watching the sun in different wavelengths - and therefore different temperatures - scientists can watch how material courses through the corona, which holds clues to what causes eruptions on the sun, what heats the sun's atmosphere up to 1,000 times hotter than its surface
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