Images: Hot news about the sun

Scientists are analyzing never-before-seen views of the surface of the sun from the Hinode spacecraft. Launched September 23, 2006, Hinode, which is Japanese for sunrise, was designed to study the interaction between the sun's magnetic field and its corona.

This Hinode photo shows two sunspots, a larger older one and a smaller growing one, that collided and exploded into a major solar flare on December 13, 2006. It was recently reported that this flare caused some problems with GPS signals.