Anything getting close to the sun -- with temperatures estimated at 9,900 Fahrenheit -- would surely burn up.
However, if that object were an alien spacecraft it could be equipped with a technology that could withstand that enormous heat.
Of course, that's a very big "if."
On April 24, a camera on NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory seems to have captured the image of something very large and artificially constructed hovering perilously close to our solar neighbor.
The NASA video shows something that looks like a huge, sectioned object with some sort of lengthy attached mechanical arm.
As the video spreads around the Internet, UFO believers are claiming the object is an alien spaceship.
Watch NASA video of the object in question:
According to Life's Little Mysteries, a scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory, or NRL, theorizes the object in space is just a collection of streaks left by cosmic rays that hit the camera's CCD sensor.
"The streaks in question are consistent with energetic particle (proton) impacts on the CCD, something which is apparent in just about every image," Nathan Rich, of the NRL's solar physics branch, told the website.
"These artifacts do not persist from image to image," Rich added, which suggests the cosmic streaks can explain what UFO proponents are hoping turns out to be an extraterrestrial craft.
A cosmic ray burst on the camera may also account for the "boom arm," pictured below, that seems to be attached to the hinged "spacecraft."
This story is raising the kind of interest as a previous NASA image did last December when the space agency's Heliospheric Imager-1 telescope photographed part of the solar wind streaming from the sun.
Ever-vigilant ET hunters claimed the ejected solar material uncovered a hidden or cloaked alien spaceship near the inner planet Mercury.
In that case, Rich told The Huffington Post that the "alien" image was a visual after-effect or ghost artifact of Mercury that was photographed the previous day.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
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Posted: 04/26/2012 3:30 pm Updated: 04/27/2012 1:04 pm