The Boston Globe runs a beautiful feature called “The Big Picture”. The most recent features images of The Sun which are breathtaking.
One thing I find particularly cool is that many of the most detailed pictures were taken with ground based telescopes, such as the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope. They use the full set of tricks to get this amazing resolution — including adaptive optics, where the telescope’s own mirror is deformed to match the distortions in the Earth’s atmosphere.
The picture above is dramatically reduced in size and quality; go see the real thing.
In other amazing-space-image related news, NASA will try to fix the Hubble Space Telescope tomorrow by switching to a backup system. The Hubble has been unable to send pictures back down to Earth for a few weeks now, as it’s come down with a bad case of broken electronics. In the meantime, they’ve still been able to do useful science by obtaining ever-more accurate positions of stars.
Interesting post !! well said. I like your blog !!
I study the sun actually,
One place I work for online is ..
http://www.solarmonitor.org
found your name in a comment on Bad Astronomy . And checked out your site .