Great ball of fire!
...the most incredible pictures of the sun you’ve ever seen
IT MAY look like a child has just swirled a paintbrush in a circle, but this is in fact the interior of the atmosphere of the sun.
The first ‘ high- definition’ image shows the fiery threads of plasma which coil together and release the solar storms which knock out satellites and wreck power stations.
Incredibly, the spectacular picture was taken by Nasa’s HighResolution Coronal Imager telescope in just 150 seconds, during a rocket trip to view the sun which took 15 minutes between its launch and landing in New Mexico.
But the image is so sharp that British scientists have for the first time been able to detect individual threads of electrified iron – the smallest of which is around 125 miles (200km) wide.
The pictures, which have been artificially coloured yellow and red by Nasa, may help to create space weather forecasts.
This is because the threads make up the ‘coronal loops’ which surround the sun, and solar storms happen when these loops twist at both ends and snap like an elastic band.
If scientists can see the threads twisting then they might be able to predict the storms. These strands may also answer why the sun’s atmosphere burns at one million degrees Celsius (1.8million Fahrenheit), while its surface is just 6,000C (10,800F).
The findings show the threads are everywhere, even in the ‘quiet’ parts of the sun’s atmosphere which had previously looked dark and empty in telescope images.
This means that they are likely to be producing thousands of tiny ‘nano-flares’ which keep the atmosphere so hot. Professor Robert Walsh of the University of Central Lancashire analysed the images for a study published in the Astrophysical Journal.
He said: ‘ Until now, solar astronomers have effectively been viewing our closest star in “standard definition”.
‘The exceptional quality of the data provided by the Hi-C telescope allows us to survey a patch of the sun in “ultra-high definition” for the first time.’
‘Picture was taken in 150 seconds’