Never judge a quiet sun by its boring name. A trove of data from a NASA mission finds that the seemingly low-activity areas of the sun are not as dormant as the name might suggest.
Researchers in Wales used the NASA data to examine the outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere known as the solar corona. Studying the solar corona is of great importance for understanding what drives the solar cycle, which is an 11-year period of change the sun experiences. The corona can also tell us how the cycle affects the sun's light and heat output, and how cycle-related changes may affect Earth.
The sun's corona, which means "crown" in Latin and Spanish, is made up of plumes of gas and plasma — and temperatures can reach extremes of 3.5 million degrees Fahrenheit (2 million degrees Celsius). Huw Morgan, a researcher at Prifysgol Aberystwyth University in Wales, spent many weeks processing seven years' worth of coronal data. Read more...
Researchers in Wales used the NASA data to examine the outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere known as the solar corona. Studying the solar corona is of great importance for understanding what drives the solar cycle, which is an 11-year period of change the sun experiences. The corona can also tell us how the cycle affects the sun's light and heat output, and how cycle-related changes may affect Earth.
The sun's corona, which means "crown" in Latin and Spanish, is made up of plumes of gas and plasma — and temperatures can reach extremes of 3.5 million degrees Fahrenheit (2 million degrees Celsius). Huw Morgan, a researcher at Prifysgol Aberystwyth University in Wales, spent many weeks processing seven years' worth of coronal data. Read more...