Without warning the Sun releases huge flares of hot gas into the Solar System. They have the abilitity to affect power grids on Earth, satellites and astronauts. This particular image was captured by the TRACE satellite. The gas flowing in loops are what we were taught are called Coronal Loops. It is basically material being thrown off of the sun on the layer called the corona. The flare is a shower of electrons raining down from the corona onto the photosphere, heating the coronal gas to temperatures usually encountered only deep inside the sun (10 million degrees Celsius).
The image was taken in September 2005, it captured the X-ray waveband. The twisting and reconnecting of these loops initiate the flare. NASA's Swift satellite detected a similar flare from a star called II Pegasi. It is 135 light-years from Earth and was one hundred million times more energetic than the sun's typical solar flare. If it had of been from our sun, it would have created a mass extinction on Earth. Fortunately our Sun is stable and doesn't create flares to this power.
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