The spectacular images that were clicked by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory Satellite (SDO) early last year, and released recently, offer some stunning details of the Sun --- clearly showing the Sun’s boiling inner workings in a manner that could never have been detected by the human eye.

The excellently clear and attention-grabbing SDO pictures of the Sun show the light thrown off by the life-giving star in the ultraviolet as well as x-ray spectrum; thereby giving a unique perspective to assist the scientists in understanding the internal motion of the gigantic ball of burning gas.

Some of the pictures of the February 2010-launched SDO reveal the thus-far-unseen details of material streaming outward and away from sunspots; while others point up mesmerizing close-ups of the activity on the Sun’s surface, picturing the light that the star throws off at wavelengths which are characteristically imperceptible to the human eye.

With the SDO images of the Sun being extremely clear, it is being hoped that the satellite – which is on a five-year $85million mission, orbiting 22,000 miles above Earth – will feed back to the most comprehensive data ever by any solar-observing spacecraft.

The SDO gives off 1.5 terabytes of data – equivalent to a whopping number of 500,000 songs on an MP3 player – each day; and NASA has now started releasing the images of the Sun on a daily basis.