Space Art

Take a look at this!

A NASA satellite has caught a stunning, yet eerie, video of a huge plasma twister rising up from the surface of the sun. The video, taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, shows a plasma eruption that swirls up like a tornado to a dizzying height of up to 93,206 miles (150,000 kilometers) above the solar surface.
"Its height is roughly between 10 to 12 Earths," solar astrophysicist C. Alex Young of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told SPACE.com.

The whole thing reminded me of the amazing shapes described in Stanislaw Lem's Solaris. In that book, the ocean planet creates a number of different strange formations that are classified variously as "tree-mountains," "extensors," "fungoids, "symmetroids," "assymetroids," and "mimoids." These creepy yet seemingly intelligent extensions of the planet lend another dimension to the novel's overall theme of the impossibility of communication between races - and it's that bittersweet feeling, tinged with awe, that strikes me when I see incredible space art such as this.