Coronal rain: Streams of ionized gas rain on Sun after a solar flare
(All That Plasma Will Be Lost in Time, Like Tears in Rain)
What you’re seeing is the profound impact of magnetism on the material in the Sun. I’ve described this effect before (with lots of juicy details here), but in a nutshell: The gas inside the Sun is so hot it’s ionized, stripped of electrons. When that happens it’s more beholden to magnetism than gravity, and when the magnetic field lines pierce the Sun’s surface they form loops along which the ionized gas (called plasma) flows along them.
The bright flare happens when the stored magnetic energy erupts outward, usually due to what is essentially a short-circuit in the field. That happens near the beginning of the video, and is so bright it saturates SDO’s detectors (and you can see repeated ghost images to the upper left and right of the flare as the light reflects inside SDO’s optics). Then things settle down, and that’s when the beauty really begins: The plasma flows down the loops, raining down onto the Sun’s surface.
If, like me, you’re not a fan of over-the-top sound effects, turn the volume down.