\n<\/p>\n
Besides light, the Sun sends out particles in the form of\u00a0solar wind\u00a0and in large bursts called\u00a0coronal mass ejections. Understanding how these streams and bursts of particles get pushed out from the Sun could help improve our forecasts of\u00a0space weather\u00a0reaching Earth.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Recently, the European Space Agency\u2019s\u00a0Proba-3\u00a0mission demonstrated that it\u00a0filled the \u2018solar observation gap\u2019. It can see movement to unprecedented detail in the hard-to-observe region between the Sun\u2019s surface and higher up in its outer atmosphere (the corona). This makes it\u00a0possible to closely track\u00a0solar\u00a0wind\u00a0as it sets off from the inner corona.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The\u00a0(artificially coloured)\u00a0yellow\u00a0part of the\u00a0video\u00a0shows the Sun\u00a0in ultraviolet light, recorded\u00a0by the\u00a0SWAP telescope on ESA’s\u00a0Proba-2\u00a0spacecraft. The greyscale area around it is based on data captured\u00a0in visible light by the ASPIICS coronagraph on\u00a0Proba-3.\u00a0This data is processed to enhance contrast.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
You can see flows of solar wind moving away from the Sun in all directions. In some regions, particularly around the bottom of the video, you can see some material also falling back towards the Sun. In the second half of the video, a coronal mass ejection expands towards the right.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
[Video description:<\/i>\u00a0A square video with the Sun in the centre, glowing yellow and covered with a mix of darker regions and bright, yellow arcs extending from the surface. Around it, a speckly white-grey-black video showing streams of material moving outwards along rays extending from the Sun. On the bottom, some material moves inwards, and a large burst of material expands to the right from the Sun\u2019s right side, in a series of arcs shaped like backwards Cs.]<\/i>\u00a0<\/p>\n
[Technical details:<\/i>\u00a0Proba-2\/SWAP data is measured at a wavelength of 17.4 nm with a cadence of 2\u20134 minutes and shown to 1.2 solar radii from the Sun\u2019s\u00a0centre.\u00a0Off-limb intensity was increased with a radial filter to highlight structures up to the edge of the field of view.\u00a0Proba-3\/ASPIICS data is recorded in visible light with a cadence of 30 seconds and shown from 1.2\u20133.0 solar radii from the Sun\u2019s\u00a0centre. ASPIICS data is\u00a0contrast-enhanced using\u00a0image stacking,\u00a0a\u00a0radial\u00a0filter,\u00a0highlighting the dynamics via a running\u00a0difference,\u00a0and applying the WOW (wavelet-optimised whitening) algorithm.]\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\t\t\t