See a billion tons of plasma blasted into space

Question: What does it look like when a billion tons of magnetized plasma blast off the surface of the sun, into space, while debris from the explosion falls back onto the solar surface?

Answer: It's looks really, really cool.

The scientists were especially excited to observe "coronal rain," the blobs of plasma falling back to the surface of the sun that make bright splashes as they do so.

You can see a similar version of the video above, only showing the full disk of the sun.

Additionally, Astronomy Picture of the Day recently featured another captivating video of a solar explosion grabbed by the NASA observatory.

Your mother was wrong. It's OK to stare at the sun ... sometimes.