| An orbiting Nasa space telescope captured a dark, planet-sized object flying close to the sun on Monday - and extending what looks like a refueling tube into the star's surface. The black, Death Star-like, orb is briefly engulfed in light from the sun, then flies off into space. A video edited from the Solar Dynamics Observatory's photos inspired a wave of speculation on YouTube. The imagery was captured by Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory and edited together by a YouTube user, Sunsflare, who challenged experts to explain the strange 'visitor.' Naturally, the space agency has a rather more ordinary explanation for the strange, black orb. It's not a visitor from another solar system - or a planet being born out of the surface of the sun, as others had speculated. Instead, it's a solar 'prominence' or 'filament' - a feature extending out from the sun which forms over the course of a day, and can extend hundreds of thousands of miles into space. Scientists are still puzzled as to why these features form. The 'dark' parts are material cooler than the surrounding solar matter. C. Alex Young, a solar astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre said, in a reply to Sunsflare's video, 'Filaments appear to be dark because they're coolerin relation to what's in the background. When you look at it from the edge of the sun, what you see is this spherical object and you're actually looking down the tunnel.' Nasa says, 'A solar prominence (also known as a filament when viewed ... |
