dailymail writes:

It is difficult to think of the sun as anything more than how we view it from Earth - a great, bright ball, uniform in appearance as it placidly heats our planet.

But seen in close-up, the view is startling - a raging sea of fire, as the hydrogen fuel of the sun burns away in a five-billion-year explosion.

The artistic, and out-of-this-world photographs were taken by sun enthusiast and solar photographer Alan Freidman, from the Mount Wilson Observatory near Los Angeles, California. (Culture)