The sun — you know, that big, bright star that wakes us up every morning? — the wondrous star recently put on a gorgeous light show that was captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Last Friday, August 31, the multi-colored waves and wafts exploded from the sun at 900 miles per second, reaching half a million miles into space. Luckily the eruptions weren’t aimed directly our planet, but they did interact with our magnetosphere, which resulted in some amazing auroras — take a look.