What Was Mysterious Dark Circle Near Sun?

“As part of coronal mass ejections (CME) from quiet Sun regions (not from magnetically active regions with sunspots in them), we believe there often is a big sausage-shaped structure floating above the solar surface, underneath which a curtain of cool, dense material exists.”

- Karel Schrijver, Ph.D., Principal Investigator, AIA Instrument,
NASA Solar Dynamic Observatory

March 15, 2012   Palo Alto, California, and Huntsville, Alabama - Recently YouTube videos about the March 11, 2012, solar event above were buzzed about on the internet because everyone wondered what the big “circle,” or “sphere” was and what it was doing with the dark tendril extending down to the surface of the sun.  The original source of the video is NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) and its Atmospheric Image Assembly (AIA) based in the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory (LMSAL), Palo Alto, California.