Solar Loops

Image courtesy SDO/NASA

Huge loops of plasma—superheated, charged gas—rise from an active region on the sun in a newly released picture from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. Each loop is as tall as several Earths stacked on top of each other.
The plasma loops trace the sun's otherwise invisible magnetic field lines, which rise from the star's magnetically active regions—the starting points for huge eruptions of radiation known as solar flares.