An Active Solar Region

No, this isn’t a picture of an animal fur up close and personal — it’s a fantastically detailed image of an active area on the Sun’s surface.  The image is a highly magnified view of sunspot 1087. You can see a filament winding across the surface of the sunspot region, which is many times wider than our own planet.  Observers are monitoring the solar flares emanating from this area.  Click on the image to enlarge it and you’ll be amazed at the detail.  And, this is just one tiny region of the Sun!

You might wonder how people can get such wonderful images of the sun’s active regions. Of course, they don’t do it by looking directly at the Sun — that’s a recipe for disaster if you plan on using your eyes for anything else during your lifetime.  Of course, there are those folks who think it’s okay to look at the Sun for a few seconds — but even a short glance can do damage to your retina. And, forget about looking through a telescope or binoculars — that’s an even bigger risk to your eyesight. But, if you have a special filter for your telescope, or you have eclipse viewer glasses (which allow you to look safely at the Sun), you can do some solar observations.  People like Britta Suhre use specialized filters and cameras attached to telescopes to capture these views — and really, looking at those images is the very safest way you can enjoy the gorgeousity (technical term) of the active solar regions that the Sun is presenting to us as it ramps up to its maximum active state.  Want to see more solar images, there are plenty of places to do it:

Spaceweather.com frequently posts images of the Sun. Also check out the National Solar Observatory, the STEREO Mission site, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Homepage, the Wilcox Solar Observatory, the Institute for Solar Physics in Sweden , the Solar Dynamics Observatory and many others that you can find by simply Googling the term “solar observatory”.  Happy hunting!

P.S.  By the way, there’s a chance for people living at high latitudes to see possible aurorae action from solar activity. Check Spaceweather.com for more details.