Nasa's space telescope has caught footage of a mysterious object that was flying close to the sun. The object had an extended tube that was connected to the sun.

The object in the footage appeared like a huge planet or star or UFO that had an extended tube looking like a refuelling tube into the star's surface. The video was captured by Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory and put on YouTube.

In the video, we clearly see an object that has an extended tube which is connected to the sun's surface; it looks like the object is trying to suck sun plasma or it is trying to refuel itself.

Nasa has a rather more ordinary explanation for the strange, black orb. Its scientists believe that it is a solar "prominence" or "filament" - a feature extending from the sun which forms over the course of a day, and can extend hundreds of thousands of miles into space. Scientists are still puzzled as to why these features form. The "dark" parts are cooler than the surrounding solar matter, according to the Register.

C Alex Young, a solar astrophysicist at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre, said: "Filaments appear to be dark because they're cooler in relation to what's in the background. When you look at it from the edge of the sun, what you see is this spherical object and you're actually looking down the tunnel."

Watch the video:

NASA