A solar eruption gracefully rose up from the sun on December 31, 2012, twisting and turning.

Magnetic forces drove the flow of plasma, but without sufficient force to overcome the Sun’s gravity much of the plasma fell back into the Sun.

The length of the eruption extends about 160,000 miles out from the Sun.

With Earth about 7,900 miles in diameter, this relatively minor eruption is about 20 times the diameter of our planet. 

The Earth is superimposed on this image to give us a sense of the scale. 

The Sun has a diameter of about 1,392,684 km, about 109 times that of Earth, and its mass (about 2×1030 kilograms, 330,000 times that of Earth) accounts for about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System.

The Sun formed about 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of a region within a large molecular cloud.

Most of the matter gathered in the center, while the rest flattened into an orbiting disk that would become the Solar System.

The central mass became increasingly hot and dense, eventually initiating thermonuclear fusion in its core.

It is thought that almost all other stars form by this process.

The Sun is thought to be brighter than about 85% of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy.