NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory snapped this picture of the Sun on Jan. 1, 2015.

(NASA/SDO)

Okay, it's not a literal hole.

And the sky isn't falling either.

On Jan. 1, NASA noticed that its Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite had snapped a surprising image of the sun.

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In the picture above, what looks like a massive chunk of Sun missing is actually a coronal hole.

As NASA explains in a blog post, , its distinctive aura, where the star's magnetic field shoots out into space rather than loop back to the surface.

The sun's psychedelic glow in NASA's high-res photos is caused by energy and gas trapped on the surface by the sun's magnetic field. In coronal holes, where the field extends into space, those particles leave the sun, and that region goes black.

This crisp image of the phenomenon isn't the first, however.

In the early 1970s, took the first images of coronal holes.

Last summer, NASA captured an image of a spanning at least 400,000 miles across, which it explained was "more than 50 Earths side by side."

MORE ON WEATHER.COM: Sun Images By NASA

This close-up look at an active region taken on July 9, 2010, shows a hotbed of magnetic activity, including a small solar flare bursting out into space. (NASA Solar Dynamics Laboratory)