Hot gas swirls like a pinwheel from sunspot 1084 on the solar disk, as seen in this extreme ultraviolet image from NASA's newest sun-watcher, the Solar Dynamics Observatory. The streams of plasma follow magnetic field lines that arc up from the sun and back down to the surface. The orbiting observatory happened to be in the right place to look straight down into the sunspot.

SpaceWeather.com serves up this image and more besides, captured by amateur astronomers around the globe. "Readers with solar telescopes are encouraged to take a look," SpaceWeather.com says. But don't look unless you have the right equipment.

Fortunately, you don't need any special equipment to see SDO's imagery on the Web - although red-blue 3-D glasses can sometimes come in handy.