Stormy Sun

Dark sunspots highlight this mosaic of newly released images from the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii, which is still in its commissioning phase. The sunspots, which can be as big as Earth or larger, are magnetic storms that are thousands of degrees cooler than the surrounding gas. They're often associated with eruptions of energy and particles that race into the solar system. A few of the images show quieter regions of the Sun, with bubbles of hot gas on its surface as big as the state of New Mexico. The telescope is the largest solar telescope in the world, providing the sharpest ground-based observations of the Sun to date. [National Solar Observatory/AURA/NSF]