Powerful sunspots and gauzy-looking prominences can be seen in Alan Friedman's photo of the sun, shown in hydrogen-alpha wavelengths.
Photographers are having a field day chronicling the hot flashes on our increasingly active sun.
For the past couple of weeks, astronomers have been tracking groups of sunspots as they move across the sun's disk. Those active regions have been shooting off flares and outbursts of electrically charged particles into space — signaling that the sun is ramping up toward the peak of its 11-year activity cycle. Physicists expect that peak, also known as "Solar Max," to come in 2013.
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