Great ball of fluffy fire: how the Sun looks in extreme close-up

→ Оригинал (без защиты от корпорастов) | Изображения из статьи: [1] [2]

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Saturday May 18 2024

Of all the adjectives to describe the sun, few would have chosen "fluffy", but this is the term scientists have used after capturing extremely close-up images of our star.

Captured by the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter probe, the images have revealed features of the Sun and its corona in unprecedented detail, including moss, spicules, rain and eruptions.

The spacecraft filmed the point between the sun's lower atmosphere and the corona, its much hotter outer atmosphere.

This "small" eruption pictured by the orbiter was the bigger than the Earth

ESA & NASA/SOLAR ORBITER/EUI TEAM

At such close quarters, our star appears to have a "fluffy corona", astronomers have said. "An intriguing feature visible throughout this movie is the bright gas that makes delicate, lace-like patterns across the Sun," Esa scientists said, adding: "This is called coronal 'moss'."

On the horizon of the sun,