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The Sun is prone to flare up occasionally. The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter spotted a giant "snake" slithering across the Sun's surface that may have been a sign of an even larger event.
The "snake" was captured by the Solar Orbiter as it approached the sun. It is a time lapse of multiple images recorded over three hours. The "snake" traveled at an amazing 106 miles per second over the course of three hours. That is fast enough to cause a fire around it in a few minutes.
There is a tube of gasses shooting through the Sun's magnetic field. The gasses come in the form of a state of superheated matter.
The gasses lose their outer electrons in the Sun's atmosphere, which makes them vulnerable to magnetic fields. The sun's magnetic field spans much of the surface.
David Long, an astronomer at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, said in a statement that the magnetic field is really twisted and that the snake is moving from one side to another. We're looking down on a twisted structure, so you're getting this change in direction.
The snake came from an active region of the Sun that was about to erupt in a mass ejection. The eruption was one of the most intense recorded.
It's possible that the snake was a part of the process that led to the eruption. Long and his colleagues are looking into the possibility that the Sun has a volatile activity on its surface.
NASA captured the sun at a perfect moment.
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