In honor of SunDay, learn more about the space mission helping researchers solve one of the most enduring mysteries of our Sun: why its wispy atmosphere is nearly 200 times hotter than the surface below. ☀️
A new space mission is helping researchers solve one of the most enduring mysteries of our Sun: why its wispy atmosphere is nearly 200 times hotter than the surface below. An analysis of observations made last year by the European-led Solar Orbiter mission, presented today at the European Geosciences Union meeting, suggests tiny flares just above the Sun's surface, dubbed"campfires," could be enough to heat the atmosphere to its prodigious temperature.
A prime suspect is the Sun's turbulent magnetic field. The corona consists of plasma, a gas so hot that atoms fall apart, producing a roiling soup of ions and electrons buffeted by magnetic fields. Solar telescopes can see active regions in the corona where magnetic fields loop up from the surface, channeling superhot plasma up into the atmosphere and back down in arcs visible from Earth.
Solar Orbiter's Extreme Ultraviolet Imager found"campfires" , thought to be flares up to 4000 kilometers long.Enter Solar Orbiter, which launched just over 1 year ago with six telescopic instruments and four sensors of its local environment. In May 2020, while still in its instrument-testing phase, the spacecraft swung halfway between the Sun and Earth.
Some of those indications are coming from theory. A team led by Yajie Chen of Peking University and Hardi Peter of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research used an existing model of the Sun's turbulent surface to calculate how the corona above it would behave in conditions like those observed by Solar Orbiter in May 2020. The model produced"brightenings" that werein size and duration, they report today at the EGU meeting.
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