AS THE NEAREST STAR, the Sun is the most dynamic object you can observe in the sky. A nearly perfect sphere of incandescent plasma, it's loaded with fascinating details that change by the minute. And at long last, solar activity is on the rise. Solar Cycle 25 is already on track to produce lots of active regions, sunspots and flares. Here's how you can get in on the imaging action.
Areas of interest
The Sun is close enough to reveal its churning atmosphere through a properly equipped telescope of any size. By happy coincidence, it appears around a half degree in diameter — the same apparent size as the Moon. This is one reason we get total solar eclipses, which allow for brief, unfiltered views of the Sun's outer atmosphere, the corona. The rest of the time, pointing any optic at the Sun requires the use of a safe solar filter in order to reduce its intense brightness to a safe level.
With the appropriate solar filter, the Sun is observable at many wavelengths, though Earth's atmosphere blocks some of the more interesting ones (particularly at ultraviolent wavelengths).
Besides the corona, two additional layers of the solar atmosphere are of interest to amateurs: the and the . The photosphere is made up of bright granules of plasma that rise and sink over the course of about 10 minutes and is the deepest layer of the Sun that we can directly observe. Additionally,
