Space weather, these showers are called. On Earth it can shut down the power grid and render satellites blind. A recent study by scientists at the University of Warwick in England concluded that the sun’s most powerful “superstorms” occur about once every 25 years.

In outer space the sun’s stream can endanger astronauts. Next to weightlessness and boredom, the radiation hazards from space weather are considered the biggest obstacles to human travel to Mars and beyond.

Caught in striking detail, the sun’s face is divided into “kernels”: cell-like structures, each about the size of Texas, that carry heat from the inside of the sun to the outside. Hot gas rises in the bright centers of the cells, cools and then sinks back down in the dark lanes separating the cells.

The images were taken as part of the initial test, known as “first light,” of the Inouye telescope, which was built by the National Science Foundation atop Haleakala, an ancient cratered volcano, sacred to native Hawaiians, on the island. Haleakala means “house of the sun” in Hawaiian. What better place to build the world’s biggest telescope devoted to the sun?