{"id":796365,"date":"2025-05-29T08:35:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T13:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=796365"},"modified":"2025-05-29T08:35:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T13:35:09","slug":"amazing-images-reveal-new-details-in-the-suns-atmosphere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=796365","title":{"rendered":"Amazing images reveal new details in the sun&#8217;s atmosphere"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<p>\n    <iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Never before seen details in the sun&#039;s atmosphere\" width=\"1110\" height=\"624\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ldwmygyq3nM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\n    <\/iframe>\n<\/p>\n<p>Astronomers have revealed new processes taking place in our sun\u2019s atmosphere, thanks to exquisite new images of the star.<\/p>\n<p>Dirk Schmidt at the US National Solar Observatory\u00a0and his colleagues used the Goode Solar Telescope in California to produce the images. They used a technique known as adaptive optics to remove the blur of Earth\u2019s atmosphere when observing the sun, allowing them to observe features in the corona, the star\u2019s outer atmosphere.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou see dramatically more detail that it\u2019s unlikely anybody has seen before,\u201d says Schmidt.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"ArticleImage\">\n<div class=\"Image__Wrapper\"><\/div><figcaption class=\"ArticleImageCaption\">\n<div class=\"ArticleImageCaption__CaptionWrapper\">\n<p class=\"ArticleImageCaption__Title\">Plasma streams in the sun\u2019s corona<\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleImageCaption__Credit\">Schmidt et al.\/NJIT\/NSO\/AURA\/NSF<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>Those details include streams of plasma dancing through the corona and loops of plasma known as solar prominences breaking apart and reforming.<\/p>\n<p>The images also show some of our best-ever views of coronal rain, city-sized droplets of plasma that fall to the sun\u2019s surface as they cool and become denser. \u201cThey are pulled down to the sun\u2019s surface by gravity,\u201d says Schmidt.<\/p>\n<p>The observations were taken in the summers of 2023 and 2024. It is hoped that some of the imagery might give us new insights into why the sun\u2019s corona is so much hotter than its surface \u2013 millions of degrees compared with thousands of degrees \u2013 a mystery that remains unresolved.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"js-content-prompt-opportunity\"\/><\/p>\n<p>One possibility might be magnetic fields snapping together in the sun\u2019s corona. \u201cIn many images and movies we provide, you can see tangled and twisted structures and twisting motions on very small scales,\u201d says Schmidt, which might cause nanoflares that heat the corona.<\/p>\n<p>Some features in the images are a mystery, including a wisp of plasma that morphed into multiple blobs. \u201cWe are currently lacking a definitive explanation,\u201d says Schmidt. \u201cI believe this could be something new, and it will be exciting to see how other scientists pick this up.\u201d<\/p>\n<section class=\"ArticleTopics\" data-component-name=\"article-topics\">\n<p class=\"ArticleTopics__Heading\">Topics:<\/p>\n<\/section><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/2482320-amazing-images-reveal-new-details-in-the-suns-atmosphere\/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&#038;utm_source=NSNS&#038;utm_medium=RSS&#038;utm_content=space&#038;rand=772163\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Astronomers have revealed new processes taking place in our sun\u2019s atmosphere, thanks to exquisite new images of the star. Dirk Schmidt at the US National Solar Observatory\u00a0and his colleagues used&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":796366,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-796365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-scientist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=796365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/796366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=796365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=796365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=796365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}