JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Extreme bursts of magnetic energy on the sun made it look like a carved pumpkin in the sky.
A glance at the sun on Oct. 8, 2014, wouldn't have shed even a glimmer of what NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, saw in the sky.
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The special instrument captured active regions on the sun that happened to resemble a jack-o'-lantern's face.
The colorized gold and yellow enhancements in the image are coronal loops of gigantic magnetic arcs marking electrically charged gases in the sun's atmosphere.
This image blends together two sets of extreme ultraviolet wavelengths showing the sun's atmosphere, or corona, and also the much hotter material of a solar flare.
The surface of the sun is such a busy place that the SDO is constantly monitoring the swirling gases, which tangle, stretch and twist the magnetic field's solar activity.