Watch: NASA's SDO captures tornado-like phenomenon on sun

Credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA

Washington: NASA's Solar Dynamics Observator (SDO) has recently captured a breathtaking video of the sun.

The spacecraft recently spotted a small, but 'complex mass of plasma' that gyrated and spun over the surface of the sun from September 1 to 3.

According to NASA, this 'complex mass of plasma' gyrated and spun about over the course of 40 hours above the surface of the sun.

“It was stretched and pulled back and forth by powerful magnetic forces but not ripped apart in this sequence,” NASA said on its website.

The US space agency also said that the temperature of the ionized iron particles observed in this extreme ultraviolet wavelength of light was about 2.8 million degrees C (or 5 million degrees F).

NASA's SDO, which is designed to fly for five years, has delivered a number of amazing images and videos of the sun since it launched in February 2010.

SDO is the first satellite under the Living with a Star (LWS) program at NASA. The spacecraft is being designed to help us understand the Sun's influence on Earth and Near-Earth space by studying the solar atmosphere on small scales of space and time and in many wavelengths simultaneously.