The "Behind" member of NASA's STEREO spacecraft studying the sun has captured spectacular imagery of a rare somersaulting coronal mass ejection.

---

A movie of the event combines images captured with the spacecraft's Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUVI) and Inner Coronograph (COR1) telescopes.

The prominence is first seen erupting in the EUVI images and then in white light with COR1. In the white light images, the prominence pauses. Some of the material then drains back down, but most of it is defected to the north and ends up raining down on a different part of the sun.

According to NASA, this is unusual behavior and will be studied carefully by scientists.

To check our more images from NASA missions, be sure to check out the NASA Goddard stream on Flickr.

---

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).