Nightly News   |  February 17, 2012

Solar tornadoes on sun's surface

Funnels of dark plasma hundreds of thousands of miles long were made visible by the Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>> a satellite that keeps an eye on the sun for all of us here on earth has sent back some extraordinary images of sun tornados. the visible churning funnels are dark. they're made of plasma. each one is hundreds of thousands of miles long. the solar dynamics observatory satellite, which captured these images, has been up there watching the sun for the past two years.