Our sun and closest star is believed to be approximately 4600 million years old and is composed (by mass) of hydrogen (74.5%), helium (23.5%) and various other heavier elements (2%) such as oxygen and carbon. Due to this gaseous state, the sun does not rotate about its axis at one uniform rate but has the poles rotating at a slower rate than the equatorial region. It has a central temperature of 14 million degrees whereas the surface temperature is a mere 5500 °C. With a diameter of 1.4 million km, it is about 109 times as wide as Earth whereas with a mass of 2 x 10³⁰ kg, it is 335,000 times more massive than Earth. Of interest is the observation that its density of 1400 kg/m³ is only slightly more dense than water (1000 kg/m³).

It would be trite to say that the Sun never sleeps, for it provides the interested observer a wealth of activity which is both dynamic and breath-taking when viewed, for example, in certain wavelengths such as H-alpha. To this end, it dispells the common misbelief that all astronomy is done under dark skies, for the sun provides a wealth of material for both observation and imaging during the day as the sample images below suggest!

All of the images below have been captured using specialized filters which totally block the transmission of UV radiation and permit for approximately 1/100th of 1% of available solar light to pass through the telescope or, in the case of the H-alpha images, very specific narrowband filters are employed to stydy a particular wavelength of solar radiation.

Please remember to click on any image to enter the appropriate image gallery with many additional examples. Enjoy!