NASA captures striking coronal loops from the sun's surface

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.

The sun presents a jack-o'-lantern face in time for Halloween.

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.