Sun (Image Taken from the Boeing Observatory)

This is a processed image of the Sun taken through our specially-filtered solar telescope. It’s actually two images superimposed on top of each other...one image is of the Sun’s surface, and the other is of the edge. The camera used to take this image is black and white; color was added in processing to match the color you’d see if you looked through our solar telescope with your eye. The sunspot in the upper right is at least the size of the Earth. It’s an area where the magnetic field of the Sun has become disturbed, and is cooler than the surrounding surface. The two prominences, at lower left and upper right, are gas eruptions that extend as far as 50,000 miles away from the Sun’s surface. Prominences are not as powerful as solar flares, though they are large gas eruptions resulting from magnetic field lines extending above the Sun’s surface.