Amazing Photos of the Sun

Ring of Fire
A dense cloud of loop-shaped gas erupts from the sun's surface. A solar prominence, as this occurrence is called, can loop thousands of miles into space and can persist in the sun's corona for several months. The largest known prominence, an extension more than 430,000 miles (about 700,000 km) — roughly equivalent to the star's radius — was observed in 2010.

• The Hubble Telescope's Greatest Hits