Amazing photos of the Sun . . .

. . . And pretty stunning follow-up commentary by those who have seen the photos and/or read the captions.

Check out "The Sun" on boston.com.

. . . Then read some of the comments. Like this one (#339) from "Mufti" on October 16th, one of the first comments that was visible at the time I first accessed the page):

Praise Allah!

Without his divine grace such beautiful pictures would not be possible. A jihad on those who praise false idols, like Jesus. How can you not see the beauty and grace of Allah here?

At first, I thought this was a joke. Comment #341, for example, reads,

Ra is powerful and beautiful.

Posted by djon

And #342:

Kaar torrak! Immaa taamaatsimik assiliiveqarlini! ( Holy smoke this is great! I wish I have such a camera my self!) Hey, we are in the evolution time, our mind, our materiel discovery are allways in progress, so why are we not in progress in our thinking that we are all ONE ?? Alfa Omega created us, we are part of Alfa Omega. We are individualized Alfa Omega!!

Posted by Steen Berthelsen

But by the time I read #343, I wasn't sure anymore:

All praise must go to Allah! He is the creator of such life giving beauty as the Sun and everything that exists. So prostrate yourselves before Allah and worship him alone.

Posted by Taslim Abdani

And as I continued down the page, I lost my doubts:

'Gott strafe England'
'And God save the king'
God this, God that and God the other thing.
'Good God' said God
'I've got my work cut out'

Stunning photos, let down only by the remarks that follow them - possessive idealogues instantly attributing the sun to the pinnacle entity of their own personal beliefs. Where's the doubt, where's the questioning: the very qualities that teach us humility and provoke us to strive? Naturally they're quite absent. Instead all is certainty in the fortress of the zealot.

Posted by Achi006

Ama[z]ing pictures!

All Gods are works of FICTION.
DEAL WITH IT. Muppetts!

Posted by Darth

And so forth.

Actually, now that I think of it, perhaps you don't want to read the comments. Just enjoy the photos.

They are all pretty amazing, but I am particularly intrigued by the "moving picture," #3 ("NASA's STEREO satellite captured the first images ever of a collision between a solar 'hurricane,' called a coronal mass ejection (CME), and a comet on April 4, 2007"), #6 ("The planet Venus is seen by NASA's TRACE satellite, at the start of its transit across the sun on June 8, 2004"), #13 (Mercury beginning its transit), the series of four photos in #8 ("Solar flares produce seismic waves in the Sun's interior that closely resemble those created by earthquakes on our planet"), #9 ("An animation of the sun, seen by NASA's Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) over the course of 6 days, starting June 27, 2005"; boy! You get a sense of how violent and active the Sun really is!), #11 (the Sun looks like a blown glass kugel ball), #17 . . .

Oh. Just view the whole page.

Give it time to load, though. Especially for the animated series.

Awesome!