The SOHO spacecraft has been watching the Sun for six years. Never has it seen anything like this.

The Sun unleashed a powerful "solar prominence" Friday, Jan. 4. Then instruments on SOHO recorded what one researcher says could be the most complex coronal mass ejection the spacecraft has ever witnessed.

"It's certainly the most spectacular I have seen," said Paal Brekke, deputy project scientist for SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory).

Coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, are tremendous outpourings of energy. This one involved billions and billions of tons of charged particles hurled into space at 3.5 million kilometers per hour, Brekke said.

CMEs are often associated with solar flares. But this one was not. Instead, it was caused by an erupting filament of material, which scientists call a prominence when it loops out from the edge, or limb, of the Sun as seen from our vantage point.

The violent activity is all driven by complex magnetic fields inside and on the surface of the Sun.

"This is a very good example of how important SOHO is as a space weather watchdog," Brekke told SPACE.com. "It's the only mission that can see the CMEs and in particular when they come towards Earth."

SOHO, a project of NASA and the European Space Agency, sits partway between Earth and the Sun.

It has detected several similar events in recent years, and many of them have hurled charged particles directly at Earth. Forecasters warn satellite operators and those who manage radio communications and power grids, all of which can be affected.

The image of the Friday event was taken by an instrument on SOHO called LASCO (Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph).

LASCO makes images by blocking the light coming directly from the Sun with an occulter disk, creating an artificial eclipse within the instrument. The position of the Sun's outer rim is indicated in the image by a white circle.