SDO's Ultraviolet Sun, NASA

More than three months after being hurled into orbit, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory is snapping some breathtaking images of the Sun, the first of which NASA released this afternoon. The mission designers have to be happy with them: the pics capture huge looping prominences lashing out from the surface and the kinds of massive explosions one might expect from a giant, churning ball of cosmic gas.

A prominence eruption, NASA

Video of a prominence eruption

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lmm3J0WAres

Multi-temperature imagery of an eruption

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xaJnDTcJZc

More images and video on NASA SDO
SDO on YouTube