Sun surface

On August 31, 2012 the Sun threw a major tantrum. It started with a vast arc of material towering over its surface, a stream of plasma flowing between two sunspots. Sometimes these collapse back down to the Suns surface, but this one exploded, blasting hundreds of millions of tons of material out into space. SDO captured this ridiculously awesome picture of the arc just before it erupted! by carter flynn on Indulgy.com

You’re gonna need shades for this one.

Nasa captures magnificent footage of huge solar flare erupting from the sun.

The $850 million Solar Dynamics Observatory may help scientists find the causes of solar weather events that disrupt technologies on Earth. Here are some of the latest images from the new observatory.

Scientists say Earth's atmosphere is about to get hit by some record cold – but it's not because of anything caused by humans. It's because of a lack of sunspots which means a major decrease in ultraviolet waves coming in our direction.

Even in the age of Photoshop, we can sometimes believe our eyes. Check out these spectacular space photos that look magical without being made-up.

The Sun has been pretty active lately, popping off a series of fairly powerful X-class flares; they've been generating aurorae and other magnetic...

This is zoomed in so far you will feel the burn.

The Sun is now in the quietest phase of its 11-year activity cycle, the solar minumum - in fact, it has been unusually quiet this year - with over 200 days so far with no observed sunspots. The solar wind has also dropped to its lowest levels in 50 years. Scientists are unsure of the significance of this unusual calm, but are continually monitoring our closest star with an array of telescopes and satellites. Seen below are some recent images of the Sun in more active times.