The dark heart of a sunspot and the swirling formation around it have never been photographed so clearly.  Such images from the new Swedish Solar Telescope on the Canary Island of La Palma add to groundbreaking data from terrestrial and space observatories that are making this the golden age of solar science.  There's urgency to the quest: Even as our local star makes life on Earth possible, its outbursts can also wreak havoc.