Even on the sunniest day, we can’t see sunlight at all the wavelengths it emits, but a new image from NASA reveals the “hidden light” of a nearby star in high-energy X-rays and other frequencies that are invisible to the human eye.

The “invisible light” is emitted by the hottest material in the Sun’s atmosphere and was captured by NASA’s NuSTAR orbiting telescope. The space observatory primarily studies objects outside our solar system, such as black holes and imploded stars, but regularly provides astronomers with information about the sun.

The image above is a ‘mosaic’ of multiple observations as the NuSTAR data (blue) is overlaid with observations from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Hinode X-ray telescope (green) and measurements from the Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO). NASA (red).

NuSTAR has a small field of view and cannot “see” the entire Sun from its current orbit around the Earth. The final image is actually a “collage” of 25 different images taken in June 2022.