A huge black hole which looks alarmingly like it’s splitting the sun in half was captured by a NASA sun-watching satellite this week.

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory showed off images of the dark patch on the sun – and said that solar wind from the ‘coronal hole’ would cause northern lights on Earth this week.

NASA said, ‘In this wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light it appears as a dark area near the center and lower portion of the sun.

Coronal holes look terrifying in the images captured by NASA’s sun-observing Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) satellite – but they’re perfectly safe, and normal.

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NASA says, ‘Coronal holes are low-density regions of the sun’s atmosphere, known as the corona. Because they contain little solar material, they have lower temperatures and thus appear much darker than their surroundings.

‘Coronal holes are visible in certain types of extreme ultraviolet light, which is typically invisible to our eyes, but is colorized here in purple for easy viewing.

‘Coronal holes are the source of a high-speed wind of solar particles that streams off the sun some three times faster than the slower wind elsewhere.’