VIDEO: Solar flare destroys giant solar prominence

A fragment of this morning's X-flare, captured by space telescopes continuously monitoring the Sun. Magnetic filaments ejected from the center of the flare wrap around and "devour" a nearby solar prominence—a huge filament of dark, cold gas, approximately 300,000 kilometers long, that had inadvertently strayed near the explosion site. The almost mechanical precision with which the plasma "boa constrictor" finds and wraps itself around its prey is controlled by electric currents flowing in the solar corona, as well as the difference in gas pressure between the hot core of the flare and the cold body of the prominence.

Equally mesmerizing is the final portion of the footage, as the plasma filaments, spinning madly, screw back into the solar surface, dragging along the remains of the weaker, slower gas "creature" they had just torn apart.