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Spacecraft Takes Close Up Video of the Sun, Revealing Otherworldly Hellscape

The European Space Agency has released an incredible video of the Sun's roiling surface, which was taken by its Solar Orbiter last year.

The European Space Agency has released an incredible video of the Sun's roiling surface, taken by its Solar Orbiter last year from a front-row vantage point. The dynamic video shows strands of energized particles leaving the star's lower atmosphere in the form of "coronal rain," with small eruptions of plasma dotting a fuzzy, "coronal moss" surface — a hellish perspective that required the daring orbiter to swoop by at an extremely close distance. The rain that's visible around the 30-second mark in the form of darker, hair-like strands that almost look like a rainbow, are relatively cool, likely lower than 10,000 degrees Celsius.

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