From time to time, a solar bulge forms on the Sun’s surface. These are long, bright features that extend outward from the Sun’s photosphere, sometimes returning towards the solar corona. Solar prominences made of plasma persist for days or even months, allowing astrophotographers to capture the Sun’s dynamics in stunning detail.

As the solar bulge formed on February 22, 2022, photographer Miguel Claro reached for his camera. The resulting images, released this week via Space.com, offer viewers a close-up look at some of the sun’s brightest surface events.

The Sun’s photosphere (the first layer of the Sun’s atmosphere) is covered in vibrant streaks of plasma, as seen at the beginning of Claro’s video. Researchers are still working to determine how solar bulges form. However, they believe that magnetic instabilities on the Sun’s surface interact with all this plasma, causing the plasma to rush out when the Sun’s magnetic field bends or contracts. The resulting plasma jet, sometimes called a filament, can be thousands of kilometers long.

“This is probably the largest event I have ever seen and recorded,” Claro wrote on Space.com. The renowned astrophotographer was at Portugal’s Alqueva Dark Sky site when he captured 4K images using an Esprit 120ED Triplet Super Apo refractor, QHY5III174 planetary camera, Daystar Quark Gemini hydrogen alpha filter and Sesto Senso 2 robotic focus engine.

To say that astrophotography requires a lot of patience would be an understatement. Some days weather conditions on Earth don’t match photos and videos of other members of the solar system. “Conditions for photographing the sun that day were good, not perfect but good enough for slow motion,” Claro wrote. Many cosmic events also occur rapidly; Since they’re shot from such a distance, just a second or two can make or break a good photo.

“This was my most stressful and happiest hobby,” Claro said. “When I realized the popularity was growing so quickly and dramatically, I had to quickly decide what to do. So I decided to cut the first scene short and turn the camera upside down and re-frame for a new composition so I could continue shooting this growing giant spout.”