Chile's ALMA observatory, located in the Atacama Desert in the northern part of the South American nation, has been aiming its radio telescopes at the sun with an eye toward studying it and revealing its mysteries.
The astronomical research centre, 5000 metres above sea level in Llano de Chajnantor, was designed to observe particularly faint and distant objects.
But the complex's director, Pierre Cox, said on Tuesday on this occasion it has revealed, among other things, a spot on the sun's surface that is twice the diameter of Earth, the centre of which is dark and warped.
"It's the first time that this type of object with such an enormous number of details has been observed" on the sun, Cox said at a press conference.
ALMA managed to detect and obtain photographs of the light emitted at millimetre wavelengths by the sun's chromosphere, the zone above the photosphere, which is the visible surface of the star, he said.
According to Cox, the observatory "is making a fundamental contribution to world astronomy, since for the first time the solar chromosphere, (about) which very little is known, is being probed".
ALMA astronomer Antonio Hales says they want to detect something very nearby and brilliant, but that the main aim is to be able to study those things which are relatively weak within the light emitted by the sun.
Regarding the difficulty in obtaining such images from the sun, Hales said that "in particular, it's very complicated to make an image. You have to have all kinds of antennas that enable us to make a reliable image".
The images obtained by ALMA were captured over a 30-month period, mainly in 2014 and 2015.
Experts say that the series of images provides a unique overview of the facilities at the astronomical complex and its capacity for studying our sun on a never-before-seen scale.