At www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02136-4 … a photograph of the sun, at the closest point ever …
… the image was taken by the Solar Orbiter Mission (ESA). Lots of miniature flares can be seen, a fraction of the size of solar flares that are visible from earth. The surface of the sun is a seething mess of thousands, if not millions, of flares. The combined effect is what gives the Sun its heat, it would appear, an electromagnetic process.
See also www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8529415/ … where we are told a British built spacecraft, the Solar Orbiter, has produced some astonishing pictures of the face of the Sun. Of course, the instruments onboard are more diverse as this is a European enterprise, and a shared mission. An ESA spacecraft would be more exact. The picture was taken while it was flying between Venus and Mercury and has yet to get to its closest point. More images to come. Solar flares are eruptions of high energy radiation from the Sun's surface … the Solar Orbiter will gradually change its inclinations to position itself in a way to captue images of the Sun's poles, never seen from the earth. It will be 5 or 6 years before images of the poles are beamed back.