gallery - solar surface & below

Animation showing how sound waves bounce around inside the Sun. The blue ray path shows waves with high frequency and the red ray paths show waves with low frequency.

TRACE movie which shows ultraviolet light emitted from hot ionised gas in the solar atmosphere.

SOHO-MDI movie showing the positive (white) and negative (black) magnetic fields at the Sun's surface. The movie covers a period of a month in May 1998.

Close-up movie of a sunspot with the Earth shown to scale. The evolution of the sunspot region can be seen over the 5 hours of the movie. Solar granulation can clearly be seen in the photosphere around the sunspot.

Movie showing solar granulation, the observable sign of convection occurring below the solar surface.

EIT He II movie showing two prominences rising above the solar surface and then erupting into space.

A full-disk H-alpha movie taken at the High Altitude Observatory , Colorado , USA . A prominence rising and then erupting can be seen on the left hand side of the Sun.

Movie of a sunspot from the La Palma observatory. Solar granulation can be seen around the sunspot.

Movie showing a series of Galileo's drawings of sunspots. The sunspots can clearly be seen rotating with the Sun.

SOHO-EIT He II movie showing the transit of Mercury, which occurred in 1999. The round, black object crossing the Sun's limb is Mercury. It can be seen because it passed between the Sun and the Earth.

YOHKOH movie of the X-ray radiation (left) and visible light (right) from the Sun. The bright parts in the X-ray image are called active regions and their locations correspond to where sunspots are observed in visible light.

Two SOHO-EIT ultraviolet movies at different stages in the Sun’s activity cycle. They show the hot, million degree corona. The movie on the left shows the Sun near solar minimum in 1996 and the movie on the right shows the Sun near solar maximum in 1999.

Still Images