Astronomy Tuesday

Detail from a recent shot of the sun in action throwing off some solar wind. The dark area on the top right is what's called a coronal hole, which is the source of the wind.

I think I find images of the surface of the sun fascinating because it's visible to us (well, not recently maybe); unlike the exotic images of distant stellar clouds or the rings of Neptune we can easily see the sun without a space probe or a telescope. We can see it, but we can't actually look at it without losing our vision forever.

Photo NASA/SDO/AIA