Here’s a video made by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory of the Sun belching “a medium-sized flare accompanied by an enormous magnetic loop of superheated plasma emanating from the surface.”

Adding spooky music and scary sound effects does sex it up quite a lot.

The viddie runs 4 minutes and 16 seconds.

By the way, such behavior on the Sun’s part isn’t much cause for concern. Events called “Coronal Mass Ejections” (CMEs) are a different matter, however. During those, the Sun hurls bits of itself out into space at about 1 million miles an hour. If a CME is sufficiently powerful and headed this way, we’ll have about 93 hours (not quite 4 days) to enjoy watching something that could conceivably turn back our technical civilization to roughly where it was in 1800.