Over at Discover Magazine, Chris’ friend Phil Plait (aka @badastronomer) points us to this pretty astonishing detailed photo of the sun by Alan Friedman at his Averted Imagination site. The photo shows texture on the surface and a detached prominence floating off to the left, residue from an exploding sunspot. That’s pretty amazing to see, and also amazing is that one relatively tiny sunspot on the sun’s surface is, Phil notes, roughly twice the size of Earth.  I’m not an astronomer, but a picture like this is just too fascinating to pass by.

So, first, read Phil’s post about the photo and how it was done, then head to the enlarged photo here and look at Friedman’s other photos here.

HT: Buzzfeed