The sun is Earth's closest star, yet its beauty is too intense to appreciate with the naked eye. Here are some of the most stunning solar images that our satellites and telescopes have captured.
The sun's intense brightness makes it unsafe for us to get a detailed view of it by traditional means. So, for over 200 years, humans have relied on different modes of photography to safely glimpse the nuances of our star. Now, a range of telescopes and imagers capture the details, the violence and the beauty of the solar system's heart. Here are 15 of the most dazzling examples. 1. The sun's many colors An ultraviolet image of the sun's surface. (Image credit: ESA This iridescent orb is an ultraviolet image of the sun taken by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Solar and Heliospheric Observatory's extreme ultraviolet telescope. The blue represents temperatures more than 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit (1 million degrees Celsius), yellow is 2.7 million F (1.5 million C) and red is 3.6 million F (2 million C). Related: Mysterious waves of magnetism may explain why the sun's atmosphere is hotter than physicists thought possible 2. A violent ejection An eruption of highly magnetized plasma known as a coronal mass ejection. (Image credit: NASA) This extreme ultraviolet image captures a coronal mass ejection (CME), which occurs when a cloud of highly magnetized plasma erupts from the sun, expelling the plasma and magnetic field into space. In this image, some of the solar filament falls back to the sun while much of it escapes into space. 3. Burning rain Coronal rain caused by plasma on the surface of the sun. (Image credit: NASA) When million-degree plasma in the sun's atmosphere cools, it begins to fall. The stunning stream of plasma raining down to the surface — captured here by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) — is called coronal rain . Related: Solar maximum could hit us harder and sooner than we thought. How dangerous will the sun's chaotic peak be? 4. Star loops Close-up of an anemone solar eruption. (Image credit: NASA) This image from Nov. 29, 2020, taken by NASA's SDO, displays with stunning clarity an arcade of coronal loops. Coronal loops…