Sun is the most perfect sphere ever observed in nature

I thought this headline was startling, and after reading through the article submitted here, I hunted up more reporting on the issue. The abstract of the underlying research report

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/08/15/science.1...

leads to the full report in the journal Science for people who can get through the Science paywall, and other reporting on the research report from Science staff writers

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/08/sun-slimmer-th...

and from other journalists

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/08/120817-sun-s...

http://www.nature.com/news/sun-stays-nearly-spherical-even-w...

fills in some of the details.

Kind of funny that the most perfect sphere ever observed in nature was staring us in the face this whole time. :)

Also, how is it that this was only measured just recently? Astronomers suspected it was wider at the equator, like Jupiter, but never bothered to check?

As a spinning ball of gas, astronomers had always expected our nearest star to bulge slightly at its equator, making it very slightly flying-saucer shaped

I stopped reading at this point.