The photosphere is, in fact, a layer of little clouds with darker spaces between them, and the fine detail of these clouds, their complicated structure, and the way in which, when projected against the background of a sun spot, they produce its penumbra, are all brought out in Fig.
"A Text-Book of Astronomy"
George C. Comstock
At the telescope or in the ordinary photograph these can be seen only at the edge of the sun, because elsewhere the background furnished by the photosphere is so bright that they are lost in it.
"A Text-Book of Astronomy"
George C. Comstock
In that distant past, a handful of photons deep in the interior of Sol began their random journey to the photosphere.
"Out Like a Light"
Gordon Randall Garrett