What's the Sun doing lately? What does our Sun look like? That's a trick question, because it depends on how you look at it. Thelight that comes from the Sun is composed of many colors, and not all ofthe colors come from the same part of the Sun's atmosphere. This meansthat depending on which part of the rainbow your telescope detects, youwill see different parts of the Sun's atmosphere. That's exactly howscientists study the different layers of the Sun -- by using specialtelescopes sensitive to only particular colors of light. The scientiststune their telescopes to a color that is given off by the portion ofthe Sun that they want to see. Most of the light produced by the Sun is not visible to human eyes, sowe use special detectors which can make pictures using this "invisiblelight". Images of the Sun made from light we can't see, like infrared,ultraviolet, and X-rays, for example, show us that theSun can look very different from what we see in visible light. more discussion, including a hands-on activity, check out the "ImageFiltering" activity in the YPOP SolarClassroom. You can even make your own filter wheel (although it isnot a filter you can use to look at the Sun). The pictures provided here show what the Sun looks like in severaldifferent "colors" of light. (Is it correct to call them "colors", sincesome of these kinds of light are invisible? What do you think? What might be a better word?) About these solar images: These pictures come from solarobservatories around the world and two telescopes on orbiting satellites. In every case we have tried to provide the most recent image available. Some of them are very recent (maybe only a few hours old), while somemight be several days old. The reason they aren't all fromthe same day is because most of the observatories here on the Earth canonly take pictures when the weather is clear. If it happens to be cloudyand rainy at one of the observatories, then the best image we can show youis one from the last sunny day, which might have been a few days ago. Onthe other hand, telescopes on satellites don't have to worry about rainand clouds, so we usually have new pictures from them every day. Alist of other observatories on-line is available by clicking here. If our images aren't currentenough for you, try some of these!NOTE: Because these pictures are coming to you from greatdistances all over the world, sometimes they download very slowly. Pleasebe patient. However, these are the most recent pictures available --you might be the very first person on Earth to see what's happeningon the Sun. You could discover something no one else has ever seen!(Visit the Solar Classroom)(Go to the YPOP Homepage)Revised Jan. 31, 2000 -- send comments toDavid E. McKenzie