Under a huge arch coronal loopThe wealth of exotic solar events active in the transition zone betweenUN lower atmosphereThe chromosphere and corona were recorded in this magical video. European Space Agency‘S Solar Orbiter spacecraft.
View recorded by Solar Orbiter from a distance of just over 43 million kilometers (26.7 mi) Sun, revealing features on the solar surface that we could only dream of seeing 10 years ago. This is because Solar Orbiter and its NASA equivalent, Parker Solar Probedesigned for observe the sun at a much closer range than any mission before them.
In fact, Solar Orbiter reached its closest point to the sun 10 days after shooting this video. Parker Solar Probe will reach its closest point of just 6.9 million kilometers (4.3 million miles) on Christmas Eve later this year. This may still seem like a huge distance, but the sun 1.39 million kilometers (864,600 miles) in diameter, it’s not that far at all. So close, in fact, that the Parker Solar Probe will pass the edge of the corona and withstand temperatures of 1,377 degrees Celsius (2,500 degrees Fahrenheit).
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But back to Solar Orbiter. This video, captured on September 27, 2023, with the spacecraft’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) shows several different types of features. What is important to note is that most activity on the sun is driven by tremendous solar magnetism, and much of this activity involves temperatures high enough to emit mostly ultraviolet light. The first feature that stands out when the movie begins is a bright spot in the lower left. This is called “coronal moss”. It is usually found at the base of coronal loops, which are magnetic loops that form bridges between active regions that penetrate through the sun’s visible surface (the photosphere) and conduct million-degree hot plasma (ionized or electrified gas). The moss is so named because it appeared spongy when solar physicists first discovered it.
But Solar Orbiter’s high-resolution view shows the moss to be a tangle of lace-like plasma filaments trailing intricate complexity. Magnetic field lines at the base of the loop, which is the area of the “active zone.” Where are these regions sunspots Although sunspots are too cold to be seen in the ultraviolet light in this video, they can also be found. The brightest areas in the moss emit light of over a million degrees.
We can see dark, spiky features on the horizon of the solar limb. These hair-like structures are called spiculesand these are plasma jets 300 kilometers (185 miles) in diameter that can reach altitudes of 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles) above the photosphere; they are waving time With the sun’s slowly oscillating magnetic field. Millions of spicules, racing upward at speeds between 15 kilometers per hour and 110 kilometers per hour (9 miles per hour and 68 miles per hour), are present on the sun at any given time, depositing large amounts of plasma into the chromosphere and corona.
Twenty-two seconds into the video, something else happens. You will see an explosion of cooler material rising deeper into the chromosphere before falling back towards the photosphere. The intensity and scale of this explosion are extraordinary; It may seem modest compared to the rest of the Sun, but this explosion bigger than our entire Earth.
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Towards the end of the video, it is possible to catch another elusive solar event: coronal rain. Despite its name, this is not water. It consists of droplets consisting of huge clumps of plasma at 10,000 degrees Celsius (18,000 degrees Fahrenheit), which exit the coronal loop and fall back into the photosphere. The reason coronal rain appears dark is because, unlike the million-degree hot corona around it, the rain is relatively cold, creating a contrast effect similar to dark sunspots.
What happens in the sun has reflections in the distance. solar systemMuch of the energy witnessed in this video is eventually released. space by driving solar windmade of charged particles. This solar wind encounters the spacecraft, planets and the moons interact with them (this northern Lights, for example). Solar Orbiter and Parker Solar Probe can team up to study the solar wind, and it just so happens that Parker Solar Probe was just 7.26 million kilometers (4.51 million miles) from the sun when Solar Orbiter captured this video — Parker soon after this activity was recorded I felt the solar wind leaving the sun. Thanks to Solar Orbiter, which investigates the source of the solar wind and where it gets its energy, and Parker Solar Probe, which measures the intensity of the wind, solar physicists can obtain a clearer picture of how the solar wind forms and develops as it moves away from us. star.