15 Mind-Blowing Pictures Of Space

It looks like a deep pit, perhaps even the entrance to hell, but this image, taken by the New Solar Telescope in LA, is the clearest view we've ever had of the mysterious dark spots on the sun's surface.

Sunspots are temporary dark patches that bloom on our sun. They travel across its surface, pulsing as they expand and contract, and can range from 16 km (10 miles) to 160,000 km (100,000 miles) in diameter.

They appear to be caused by the sun's magnetic activity and are often hanging around the same kind of areas that solar flares and coronal mass ejections originate from. We have also spotted them (no pun intended) on other stars in the Milky Way, and these are generally known as starspots.