Astronomers were given a spectacular show on the sun as a "solar tornado" made its way across the surface.

The footage, captured over a 30-hour period by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. captures the slow-moving solar flares as they danced across the surface.

The large solar "tornadoes" blasted across the surface of the sun on February 7 and 8, and are formed by the magnetic field created by the star.

"An active region rotating into view provides a bright backdrop to the gyrating streams of plasma," SDO mission scientists were quoted as saying on space.com. "The particles are being pulled this way and that by competing magnetic forces. They are tracking along strands of magnetic field lines."