The sun has been the focus of study for thousands of years. Ancient
people realized that the sun was linked to everything around them. They
figured out that everyday and seasonal occurrences on earth were related
to the sun. They used this correlation to their benefit by using the sun
to forecast the seasons for crop planting and eventually to keep time. The
sun posed the only regularity in their lives. As time flowed by and earth
experienced more revolutions around the sun people began to see that the
sun was not quite the perfect and regular sphere that it seemed. Although
Chinese astronomers reported seeing dark spots on the sun as early as 2nd
century B.C.E., this observation is credited to Galileo. He documented the
first sun spots about 1,800 years later. These obsevations lead to more discoveries.
People began to see the sun as a dynamic, hostile, and yet a life and light
giving object. As knowledge of the sun grew so did it's myseries. Infact
what we see with our naked eye is not the whole picture. What we see as the
surface is where the gas has become less dense so it is transparent to light.
So different methods where developed in order to observe the "whole picture".