It's not every day that you get to see the surface of the Sun. The glowing ball of heat is so bright that you can't look at it with the naked eye without going blind, and even if you could, it's still too far away to see up close.
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) was launched in 2010 to take care of that for us. The observatory actually can look at the Sun, and it provides pictures in wavelengths clear enough that we can see the surface of the Sun in incredible detail.
NASA has just released a new video over the weekend via the SDO that shows the surface of the Sun in real time as the hellish plumes of heat slosh around on the surface of the Sun and heat waves roll across the surface in an incredible act of thermo-chemistry.
The video is ultra-high definition (4K), and it's worth taking a look at, even if you don't have the time to watch the WHOLE thing…
