Sol is our nearest star, a middle-aged G-type main-sequence star located a mere 8 light-minutes from Earth. This capture reveals several active sunspot groups crossing the solar disc — regions where intense magnetic field lines suppress convection, cooling the surface to around 3,500 K and making them appear dark against the surrounding photosphere at 5,500 K. Sunspots form in pairs of opposite magnetic polarity and are closely linked to solar flares and coronal mass ejections. At 4.6 billion years old, Sol is approximately halfway through its main-sequence lifetime and fuses around 600 million tonnes of hydrogen into helium every second. It is the only star we can resolve in detail with modest equipment.