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A mushroom of cooled plasma popped like a pimple and rained onto the surface of the sun yesterday—shooting perhaps the largest amount of solar material into space ever seen, scientists say.

(Watch a video of the solar flare.)

The solar flare—an unusually bright spot on the sun—wasn't surprising as a "moderate" event. Space observatories in the past year recorded about 70 such solar flares, each roughly ten times weaker than "extreme" flares, of which only two have occurred since 2007.

(Related: "Biggest Solar Flare in Years—Auroras to Be Widespread Tonight?")

Instead, what shocked scientists was the unusual amount of material that lofted up, expanded, and fell back down over roughly half the surface area of the sun. The event's simultaneous launch of particles into space is called a coronal mass ejection (CME).

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