Recent NASA imagery shows an unusual shape
NASA recently released some images of our sun which seemed to feature some sort of structure orbiting the sun. Dubbed the "Icarus Craft" by some, the shape appears to be two gray lines joined by a ball in the center. The lines are at about an 120 degree angle, facing the sun, as if to collect sunlight or solar particles.
UFO speculators have described the two straight lines as "boom arms," and the entire thing as a jointed craft. The obvious UFO conclusion is that it is parked at the sun like a car at the gas station, tanking up on the sun's energy in order to continue zipping around the universe.
The idea of aliens hanging around our sun is not a new one. Last December, some UFO hunters spotted what appeared to be an alien craft lurking behind Mercury - in other words, in roughly the same area where the Icarus Craft was photographed.
NASA meanwhile has explained that the image is just an artifact of the CCD cameras which they use for solar photography. The cameras are sensitive enough to pick up on flashes of light from proton impacts on the camera's lens. Sort of like an extremely high tech sensitive version of the "dust particle/orb" phenomenon, in other words.
It's notoriously difficult to judge size from a photograph. If it is an actual craft, it appears to be hundreds of miles across, judging by comparison with the other objects (the sun, partially occluded by Mercury) in the shot. However, this could just be forced perspective.
Science fiction novelists have been using the sun as spaceship fuel for decades. Every star in the universe (including our own) is a power plant of massive size, throwing off energy in every direction. All you have to do is figure out how to catch and store it!
Stars are not only enormously powerful, they are also ubiquitous throughout the universe. No matter where you are, if you have a faster than light drive, you are probably near enough to a star to be able to tank up.
There are two basic sci fi technologies that capture the power of stars: push and pull. "Push" designs basically attach a huge set of sails to the spaceship, so that the ship can literally sail along on the solar wind of particles being ejected by every star. "Pull" designs include the popular ram scoop drive, which collects solar particles and funnels them into the ship's engine to use as fuel.