These photos of the sun will put your 4K TV to shame

The Sun as seen by Solar Orbiter on March 7 in extreme ultraviolet light from a distance of roughly 46 million miles. (credit: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI team; Data processing: E. Kraaikamp (ROB))

(NASA/ESA)

Have you ever really looked at the sun? Not directly, of course, that could cause permanent eye damage, but photos of the sun are the next best thing, and NASA and the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter just provided the most detailed look yet at our solar system's star.

The Solar Orbiter spacecraft took images of the sun using its extreme ultraviolet imager (EUI) on March 7, detailing the whole disc, the outer atmosphere and corona. 

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The final image contains more than 83 million pixels, according to the ESA, which has 10 times better resolution than what your 4K TV will display.

The ESA has an interactive tool that allows the viewer to zoom in and scan over the highly detailed image. 

According to the space agency, dark filaments can be seen ejecting from the sun. These solar eruptions cause space weather storms that can cause radio and GPS outages on Earth and phenomena like the Northern Lights. 

Dark filaments can be seen projecting away from the sun's surface in this image from the Solar Orbiter. These ‘prominences’ are prone to erupt, throwing vast quantities of coronal gas into space and creating ‘space weather’ storms. (Image: ESA/NASA)

Another instrument on Solar Orbiter recorded the layers of the sun, from its atmosphere down to the chromosphere, which is closer to its "surface."

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ESA said the colors in the images below correspond with different elements and temperatures. For example, the yellow and neon colors are more than 1.1 million degrees Fahrenheit, and the purple shows hydrogen gas at 18,032 degrees.

Images taken by the Solar Orbiter. Images in purple corresponds to hydrogen gas at a temperature of 10,000°C, blue to carbon at 32,000°C, green to oxygen at 320, 000°C, yellow to neon at 630, 000°C. (Credit: ESA/NASA)

These images were taken about halfway between Earth and the sun or about 45 million miles away.

On Friday, the Solar Orbiter will reach its closest orbit to the sun yet at 31 million miles and will send back even higher-resolution images. The ESA said it expects to share those new images in the coming weeks.