Tag Archive for 'Solar corona'

A high-resolution image of the flare from the Inouye Solar Telescope, taken on August 8, 2024, at 20:12 UT. The image is about 4 Earth-diameters on each side. Labels of the different relevant regions of the image are added for clarity: flare ribbons (bright areas of energy release in the dense lower solar atmosphere) and an arcade of coronal loops (arcs of plasma outlining magnetic field lines that transport energy from the corona to the flare ribbons). Image credit: NSF / NSO / AURA.

Inouye Solar Telescope Sees Unprecedented Fine Details in Coronal Flare Loops

Aug 25, 2025 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Visible Broadband Imager at NSF’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope captured dark coronal loop strands with unprecedented clarity...

Photograph of the bottom half of the Sun, with a highlighted square region around the Sun’s south pole. Taken in ultraviolet light, the image shows the hot gas in the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, glowing yellow as it extends outwards in threads and loops from the Sun. Image credit: ESA / NASA / Solar Orbiter / EUI Team / D. Berghmans, ROB.

Solar Orbiter Images Sun’s Poles

Jun 12, 2025 by News Staff

Any image we have ever seen of the Sun was taken from around the Sun’s equator. This is because Earth, the other planets, and all other operational spacecraft...

This image is a snapshot from a 16-minute time-lapse movie showing the formation and collapse of a complexly shaped plasma stream traveling at almost 100 km per seconds in front of a coronal loop system. This is likely the first time such a stream, which the scientists refer to as plasmoid, has been observed, leaving them wondering about the physical explanation of the observed dynamics. This image was taken by the Goode Solar Telescope at Big Bear Solar Observatory using the new coronal adaptive optics system Cona. The image shows the hydrogen-alpha light emitted by the solar plasma. The image is artificially colorized, yet based on the color of hydrogen-alpha light, and darker color is brighter light. Image credit: Schmidt et al. / NJIT / NSO / AURA / NSF.

Solar Astronomers Capture Most Detailed Images and Videos Yet of Sun’s Corona

May 27, 2025 by News Staff

To make these high-resolution images and movies, astronomers from NSF’s National Solar Observatory and New Jersey Institute of Technology developed a...

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe approaching the Sun. Image credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Parker Solar Probe Survives Closest-Ever Approach to Sun

Dec 30, 2024 by News Staff

On December 24, 2024, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe soared just 6.1 million km (3.8 million miles) above the surface of our home star, racing through the...

The Inouye Solar Telescope presents its first map of the solar coronal magnetic field signals as measured using the Zeeman Effect. Image credit: NSF / NSO / AURA / NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory.

Inouye Solar Telescope Creates Its First Detailed Maps of Sun’s Coronal Magnetic Fields

Sep 11, 2024 by News Staff

This milestone promises to enhance our understanding of the Sun’s atmosphere and how its changing conditions lead to impacts on our technology-dependent...

This image of the Sun was taken with the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager on board the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter mission. Image credit: Auchère et al., doi: 10.1051/0004-6361/202346039.

Solar Orbiter Captures Extreme-Ultraviolet Images of Sun’s Corona

Sep 6, 2023 by News Staff

Astronomers have used the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument onboard the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft in a new mode of operation to observe...

$Plasma is constantly streaming away from the Sun, forming the solar wind. A likely source of this plasma is coronal holes, regions of the Sun’s corona with magnetic field lines that open outward. Chitta et al. observed a coronal hole in the extreme ultraviolet using the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft and identified several types of small-scale jets within it. Large numbers of jets occurred during the observation, but each one lasted only a few dozen seconds. The authors calculated that the jets provide enough energy and plasma to supply a large fraction of the solar wind, at least during quiet periods. Image credit: ESA / NASA / Solar Orbiter / EUI Team / Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.$

Solar Orbiter Spots Tiny Jets Escaping from Outer Atmosphere of the Sun

Aug 28, 2023 by News Staff

Extreme ultraviolet images of the Sun obtained by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument onboard the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft have revealed...

This image, taken with ESA’s Solar Orbiter on April 1, 2022, shows a partial section of the Sun with gas at 1 million degrees; the red paths correspond to some of the rain tracks analyzed by Antolin et al. Image credit: Patrick Antolin / ESA / Solar Orbiter / EUI / HRI.

Meteor-Like ‘Fireballs’ Spotted in Solar Corona

Jul 6, 2023 by News Staff

Coronal rain is the most dramatic display of cooling in the Sun’s corona. It corresponds to cool and dense clumps of plasma appearing over a timescale...

This image, obtained with the Metis instrument onboard ESA’s Solar Orbiter on March 25, 2022, shows the solar corona. Image credit: Telloni et al., doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ac8104.

ESA’s Solar Orbiter Observes Magnetic Switchback in Sun’s Corona

Sep 12, 2022 by Natali Anderson

Solar switchbacks are sudden, large radial deflections of the solar wind magnetic field, previously revealed in interplanetary space by NASA spacecraft. This...

Solar Orbiter Reveals Sun’s Surface in Unprecedented Detail

May 5, 2022 by News Staff

One of the new images, taken by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) aboard the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft on March 7, 2022, is the highest resolution...

Parker Solar Probe has flown through the solar corona and sampled particles and magnetic fields there. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Parker Solar Probe Enters Magnetized Atmosphere of the Sun

Dec 15, 2021 by News Staff

The high temperatures and strong magnetic fields of the Sun’s upper atmosphere — the corona — form streams of the solar wind that expand...

Antolin et al spotted nanojets in the solar corona. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Scientific Visualization Studio.

IRIS Captures First-Ever Clear Images of Nanojets in Solar Corona

Sep 22, 2020 by News Staff

The solar corona, the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere, is shaped and mysteriously heated to millions of degrees by the magnetic field of our star....

This composite image shows the Sun with open magnetic field lines (colored) overlapping with regions with enhanced helium abundance. Image credit: NASA.

Helium Structures Spotted in Solar Corona

Aug 11, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers using NASA’s HERSCHEL (Helium Resonance Scattering in the Corona and Heliosphere) sounding rocket have obtained global images of the helium...

A high-resolution image from the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on Solar Orbiter, taken with the HRIEUV telescope on May 30, 2020. The circle in the lower left corner indicates the size of Earth for scale. The arrow points to one of the ubiquitous features of the solar surface, called ‘campfires’ and revealed for the first time by these images. On May 30, Solar Orbiter was roughly halfway between the Earth and the Sun, meaning that it was closer to the Sun than any other solar telescope has ever been before. Image credit: ESA / NASA / Solar Orbiter / EUI Team / CSL / IAS / MPS / PMOD / WRC / ROB / UCL / MSSL.

Solar Orbiter Beams Back Its First Images of the Sun

Jul 17, 2020 by News Staff

Solar Orbiter, a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA, made its first close approach to the Sun in mid-June and captured unique...

Forced magnetic reconnection, caused by a prominence from the Sun, was seen for the first time in images from SDO. This image shows the Sun on May 3, 2012, with the inset showing a close-up of the reconnection event imaged by SDO’s Atmospheric Imaging Assembly instrument, where the signature X-shape is visible. Image credit: NASA / SDO / Abhishek Srivastava / IIT.

Solar Dynamics Observatory Observes Forced Magnetic Reconnection in Sun’s Corona

Dec 18, 2019 by News Staff

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has directly observed a new type of magnetic explosion — called forced reconnection — in the solar...

SDO image of the solar corona in UV light (yellow lines represent the magnetic field on the surface of the Sun). Image credit: NASA / SDO / AIA / LMSAL.

Researchers Crack Mystery of Sun’s Magnetic Waves

Dec 3, 2019 by News Staff

For more than six decades, observations of our Sun have shown that as magnetic waves leave its interior they grow in strength, but until now there has...

This image from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows the Sun. Image credit: NASA / SDO.

Alfven Waves: Solar Magnetic Waves Behave Differently than Previously Thought

Feb 8, 2019 by News Staff

A team of physicists at Northumbria University, UK, has found that magnetic waves in the corona of our Sun — its outermost layer of atmosphere —...