NASA has revealed that a massive hole, measuring more than ten per cent of the Sun's surface area, has opened up on our star.
The enormous hole takes up much of the top half of the star
The remarkable footage was captured by the US space agency's Solar Dynamics Observatory between May 17 and 19.
The video shows a giant dark area on the star's upper half, known as a coronal hole.
A NASA spokesman said: "Coronal holes are low-density regions of the sun’s atmosphere, known as the corona.
It's massive: The footage was recorded between May 17 and 19
Our Sun ROBBED Mars of its ATMOSPHERE and it 'COULD happen to... "Because they contain little solar material, they have lower temperatures and thus appear much darker than their surroundings.
"Coronal holes are visible in certain types of extreme ultraviolet light, which is typically invisible to our eyes, but is colorised here in purple for easy viewing."
NASA says the huge hole is actually not of great concern, but it remains unclear why the coronal holes actually form.
But it does mean that large amounts of solar winds, that cause the Aurora B These would weak havoc with our communications and blast us with cancer- causing UV rays, if it were not for the Earth's magnetosphere which shields us from them.
The spokesman added: "These coronal holes are important to understanding the space environment around Earth through which our technology and astronauts travel.
"Coronal holes are the source of a high-speed wind of solar particles that streams off the sun some three times faster than the slower wind elsewhere.
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