Recent observations using the telescope offer a spectacular, unprecedented glimpse into the Sun's surface. An image captured magnetic structures, which resembled the craggy, golden texture of popcorn. Another image zooms in on a sunspot, a dark region on the Sun's surface that's relatively cool and extremely magnetic.

The images were captured after major upgrades were done on Europe's largest solar telescope.

"This was a very exciting, but also extremely challenging project," said Lucia Kleint, a scientist at the Leibniz Institute for Solar Physics in Germany and the lead researcher of the project.

"In only one year we completely redesigned the optics, mechanics and electronics to achieve the best possible image quality," Kleint added. Kleint and her colleagues published a paper detailing their work in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

In July this year, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) released recent images of the Sun captured from the Solar Orbiter spacecraft.