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A Star Wars spin-off will tell the story of a mission by a group of resistance fighters to steal plans to the infamous Death Star.

The plot of Rogue One was revealed to fans at the Star Wars Celebration convention in California on April 18.

Rogue One will be the first in a series of on-screen adventures exploring stories outside the core Star Wars saga.

The movie will be set before the first part of the original series, Episode IV: A New Hope.

It was released in 1977 and began with the Empire’s pursuit of a ship carrying Princess Leia and blueprints to the lethal space station.Star Wars Rogue One

A specially created trailer was also shown at the convention, featuring a TIE fighter soaring over a planet where the Death Star can be seen in the clouds.

Director Gareth Edwards said that because the Jedi Knights were all but wiped out in the preceding film Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, his story would be different from the other Star Wars movies.

Gareth Edwards said it would not focus on people who were able to use the mysterious “force”.

“It comes down to a group of individuals that don’t have magical powers that have to somehow bring hope to the galaxy,” he said.

Gareth Edwards, a lifelong Star Wars fan, also noted that in the previous movies, characters were clearly defined as good or bad. He said he wanted Rogue One to be more complex.

“The thing that interests me about it, is Star Wars was basically very black and white. Our movie is grey.”

Rogue One starts filming in the UK this summer and is due to be released in December 2016, a year after Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory captured a dark, planet-sized Death Star-like object flying close to the sun on Monday.

The black Jupiter-sized orb is briefly engulfed in light from the sun, then flies off into space.

A video edited from the Solar Dynamics Observatory’s photos inspired a wave of speculation on YouTube.

The imagery was captured by NASA’s space telescope and edited together by a YouTube user, Sunsflare, who challenged experts to explain the strange “visitor”.

Naturally, the space agency has a rather more ordinary explanation for the strange, black orb.

It’s not a visitor from another solar system – or a planet being born out of the surface of the sun, as others had speculated.

Instead, it’s a solar “prominence” or “filament” – a feature extending out from the sun which forms over the course of a day, and can extend hundreds of thousands of miles into space.

NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory captured a dark, planet-sized Death Star-like object flying close to the sun on Monday

NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory captured a dark, planet-sized Death Star-like object flying close to the sun on Monday

Scientists are still puzzled as to why these features form. The “dark” parts are material cooler than the surrounding solar matter.

C. Alex Young, a solar astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre said, in a reply to Sunsflare’s video: “Filaments appear to be dark because they’re coolerin 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.”

NASA says: “A solar prominence (also known as a filament when viewed against the solar disc) is a large, bright feature extending outward from the Sun’s surface.

“Prominences are anchored to the Sun’s surface and extend outwards into the Sun’s hot outer atmosphere, called the corona.

“Scientists are still researching how and why prominences are formed.

“An erupting prominence occurs when such a structure becomes unstable and bursts outward, releasing the plasma.”

NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory frequently captures the phenomenon – although often as violent eruptions, rather than the eerie sphere of this week’s activity.

“It is not uncommon for prominence material to drain back to the surface as well as escape during an eruption,” says Holly Gilbert a Goddard solar physicist.

“Prominences are large structures, so once the magnetic fields supporting the mass are stretched out so that they are more vertical, it allows an easy path for some of the mass to drain back down.”

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