The solar corona is hotter than expected, and scientists are using European Space Agency and NASA spacecraft to figure out why.
The ESA’s Solar Orbiter carries a coronagraph, an instrument called Metis, developed by scientists at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics. It blocks out light from the sun’s surface, allowing the probe to take photosof the corona. Imaging the corona in detail at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths allows scientists to study the dynamics within that solar atmosphere and better understand the heating rate within it.
NASA’s probe maneuvered much closer, about 9 million kilometers from the sun. That probe lacks cameras, but it can survive inside the sun’s atmosphere and make measurements of its plasma and magnetic fields. That enables scientists to track how heat and energy move about the corona. By using both spacecraft together, researchers on the two teams had the chance to combine simultaneous measurements and images. Most significantly, they determined that turbulence within the sun’s plasma contributes to the corona’s heat—although they’re not yet sure how much. Plasma is essentially a gas made of hot charged particles that emanate from the sun’s surface.
“Combining the data from the two spacecraft, while they are aligned but far apart, gives us the evolution of the plasma from one spacecraft [reading] to the next. Having that information is so crucial,” says Nour Raouafi, the Parker Solar Probe project scientist, who was not involved in the research.
The new data also gives insight into another enigma that has stymied astrophysicists: How the solar wind accelerates to supersonic speeds. This wind is made up of charged particles flying along the sun’s magnetic field lines, which seem to be propelled into the solar system by small, intermittent,at the base of the corona. Zouganelis and his ESA colleagues think that turbulence higher up the corona is likely involved in speeding it up, too.
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