Latest news with #corona
CBC
13 hours ago
- Climate
- CBC
Clearest images of sun's atmosphere yet show coronal rain and dancing plasma
New images that are the highest resolution ever taken of the surface of the sun and its corona will help scientists solve mysteries about how storms on the sun develop. This could improve space weather forecasts and help prevent disruptions to technology on Earth. The images were part of a recent study published in Nature Astronomy. Anyone who has seen a total eclipse of the sun has been witness to the glowing halo around our star known as the corona. This envelope of extremely hot gas extends millions of kilometres out into space and is where violent eruptions take place. These bursts of electrically charged gas can blow off the sun and reach all the way to Earth, affecting satellites and power grids. This glosses over one of the big mysteries about the sun. Scientists have not been able to entirely understand why the corona can be many times hotter than the surface of the sun itself. Something is pumping energy into the sun's atmosphere. One problem has been the dearth of observations of the corona at its base, where it meets the surface and where the violent activity originates. Nature provides brief glimpses during solar eclipses when the moon covers the bright surface of the sun allowing the dimmer corona to shine through, but continuous observations have been more difficult. Telescopes on the ground trying to study weather on the sun have been hampered by our own weather. Turbulence in our atmosphere blurs images through the same effect that makes stars twinkle at night. Now, however, new adaptive optics on the 1.6 metre Goode Solar Telescope in California has reduced the shimmering effect of our atmosphere by a factor of ten. This improvement allows us to see features at 63 kilometre resolution, which is closer than ever before. The trick was a flexible mirror that changes shape 2200 times per second, compensating and correcting for atmospheric distortion as it happens. This has resulted in the highest resolution images and movies ever made of the boundary between the surface of the sun and the corona. WATCH | What the clearest images of the sun's corona reveal: Clearest images yet of Sun's corona show city-sized blobs of plasma bouncing off the sun 4 hours ago Duration 0:31 The stunningly beautiful images reveal what looks like a fluffy surface on the sun with giant loops of material rising up, seemingly dancing and twisting with the sun's magnetic field. Meanwhile, cooler coronal raindrops, which can be narrower than 20 kilometres wide, fall back down. The observations also show something scientists have never seen before: a plasma stream they're calling a "plasmoid" moving across the solar surface at 100 kilometres per second. This is the region where solar flares and coronal mass ejections produce giant blobs of electrically charged material many times larger than the Earth, which blast off the sun and strike our planet's magnetic field. The result is beautiful northern and southern lights, but also a damaging effect on electronics in satellites and power surges in electrical grids causing blackouts. A dramatic example of this effect came in 1989 when a coronal mass ejection caused the Quebec power grid to shut down, casting most of the province into darkness for nine hours. Since then, power systems have been hardened against such events, but with more dependence on GPS satellites, navigation systems could still be interrupted. Even astronauts on the International Space Station need to seek shelter in their spacecraft to avoid the harmful radiation effects of solar flares. Future astronauts on the moon will be under similar threats from solar storms. Predicting violent solar events is challenging because the surface of the sun is a complicated, violent place that is ever changing, partly due to the fact that the equator of our star rotates faster than the poles. This causes turbulence in the hot gasses and twists the powerful magnet field into loops that can snap, releasing material into space. The sun also goes through cycles every 11 years where solar activity waxes and wanes. We are in a period of solar maximum at the moment, so monitoring its activity is important. These new corrective lenses, which can also be fitted to other solar telescopes, will enable scientists to dive into the mystery of why the corona is so hot and how solar disturbances originate. This could improve predictions in space weather so warnings can be issued earlier. As with weather on Earth, an accurate long-term weather forecast can be vital. Hopefully this will mean we see space weather coming more clearly.
Gizmodo
4 days ago
- Science
- Gizmodo
Telescope Upgrade Reveals Sun's ‘Coronal Rain' in Unprecedented Detail
A powerful new optics system has captured the clearest view yet of the Sun's corona, revealing stunning plasma structures. The Sun's outer atmosphere—the corona—is the piping hot outer limit of our star, and is usually hidden from view except during rare total eclipses. Now, scientists have gotten their clearest look ever at this mysterious region, thanks to a new adaptive optics system that scrubs away atmospheric blur, revealing fine views of the wispy plasma on the star's surface. Researchers from the National Solar Observatory and New Jersey Institute of Technology unveiled the system today, along with dazzling new images and videos of the Sun's corona. The findings, published in Nature Astronomy, show fine-scale structures in solar prominences, short-lived plasma jets called spicules, and even coronal rain: cooling plasma that falls back to the solar surface along the star's magnetic field lines. The team's imaging breakthrough hinges on a technology called coronal adaptive optics. Installed on the 5.25-foot (1.6-meter) Goode Solar Telescope in California, the new system—nicknamed 'Cona'—adjusts a mirror 2,200 times per second to correct for distortions caused by the churn of Earth's atmosphere. The remarkable technology counterbalances any would-be wobble in the telescope, thereby producing particularly sharp images of the corona. 'This technological advancement is a game-changer,' said Dirk Schmidt, an adaptive optics scientist at NSO and the study's lead author, in an observatory release. 'There is a lot to discover when you boost your resolution by a factor of 10.' Until now, solar telescopes have used adaptive optics mainly to study the Sun's surface, the release stated. Observing the fainter corona has remained a challenge, with coronal features blurred to scales of 621 miles (1,000 kilometers)—a limit that's existed for 80 years. But Cona now resolves features down to just 39 miles (63 km), the theoretical limit of the Goode telescope. Among the new footage captured by the team are shots of a twisting solar prominence reshaping in real time, spicules flickering on the surface, and fine, hair-like strands of coronal rain narrower than 12.5 miles (20 km). When you consider how far the Sun is from Earth, how faint the corona is relative to the rest of the star, and how much of Earth's turbulent atmosphere the team had to cut through and correct for, the sharpness of the images is a triumph. 'This transformative technology, which is likely to be adopted at observatories world-wide, is poised to reshape ground-based solar astronomy,' said study co-author Philip Goode, a physicist at NJIT-CSTR, in the same release. 'With coronal adaptive optics now in operation, this marks the beginning of a new era in solar physics, promising many more discoveries in the years and decades to come.' The observations offer crucial data for unraveling enduring solar mysteries—like why the corona is millions of degrees hotter than the solar surface. The team plans to bring the coronal adaptive optics technology to the 13-foot (4-meter) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaiʻi—potentially revealing even smaller details of the Sun's atmosphere.
Forbes
20-05-2025
- Science
- Forbes
In Photos: See The Stunning ‘Space Rainbows' Captured By NASA
On April 18, 2025, the WFI-2 instrument on NASA's PUNCH spacecraft created this view of the zodiacal ... More light, a faint glow from dust orbiting the sun. There are no rainbows in space, but the next best thing has been snapped by a new NASA spacecraft now orbiting Earth while testing its cameras. The spacecraft, called PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere), is about to begin investigating how the sun's outer corona — by far the hottest part of our star's atmosphere — becomes the solar wind that causes the Northern Lights. The PUNCH mission blasted off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on March 11, 2025. Also in the rocket's fairing was NASA's SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) observatory. PUNCH isn't a single spacecraft. It comprises four small satellites that together create a single 'virtual instrument' that spans the whole PUNCH constellation. The aim is to make 3D observations of the sun's corona for at least two years. It's hoped that by doing so, scientists will better be able to figure out how the sun's corona becomes the solar wind and so more accurately predict space weather. That's crucial because solar wind can greatly affect satellites and robotic explorers in space. Captured on April 16, 2025, this is the first image taken by PUNCH's WFI-1 instrument. The ... More instrument's wide field of view reveals the glow of zodiacal light stretching up and to the right. The V shape of the Hyades star cluster appears near the top, with the more compact Pleiades star cluster to the lower right. A rainbow is an optical illusion created by sunlight refracting and being reflected inside droplets of liquid in an atmosphere. That's not going to happen in space. PUNCH's 'space rainbows' are unique images of what astronomers call the zodiacal light, a triangular beam of light that can be seen on the horizon a few hours before sunrise or after sunset as the false dawn or false dusk. PUNCH's stunning polarimetric triplet images are a combination of three images (red, green and blue) of sunlight being reflected by space dust. They were created during imaging tests of three polarizers on PUNCH on April 18, 2025, with the light colorized based on its angle (polarization). For a few weeks in late September and October, a triangular beam of light appears on the eastern horizon a few hours before sunrise before gently fading. This is the "false dawn." In March and April, the opposite happens as a triangular beam of light appears on the western horizon a few hours after sunset — the "false dusk." So-called zodiacal light — literally "light from the circle of animals" — is the glow of the solar system. Reflected sunlight from interplanetary dust around the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter radiates across the (visible) optical spectrum and beyond. Depictions of two kinds of dust in space: At left the pyramid-shaped glow of Zodiacal Light caused ... More by sunlight reflecting off interplanetary dust in the inner solar system from comets and meteoroids, while at right is the band of the bright Milky Way, made of stars in our galaxy. (Photo by: VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) It's called the zodiacal light because it appears above where the sun has just set/is about to rise, so along the ecliptic — the path of the sun through the daytime sky. This is the plane of the solar system, and it's where you'll find the belt of constellations across the night sky that the sun moves through in a calendar year — hence star signs. The 12 'signs' of the zodiac are all officially recognized astronomical constellations: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. There's also a thirteenth, Ophiuchus, a huge constellation that the sun also passes through. Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
BBC News
19-05-2025
- Science
- BBC News
PUNCH mission: Nasa snaps a picture of a rainbow in space
Nasa has released a picture of a rainbow in space!The image was created by putting together photos taken by three instruments from their newly-launched PUNCH mission. It's the first rainbow-coloured view of the sky to be taken by the US space expedition is hoping to reveal new details about how the Sun's corona moves through the solar system as the solar wind. What's happened? PUNCH is the first mission designed to measure the corona and solar wind in 3D, by studying the direction light travels. Last month, a camera on board one of the four satellites which make up PUNCH took three images in succession to create the multi-coloured view. The image shows the faint glow from dust orbiting the Sun. The different colours represent the different strengths and directions of light and the finished picture gives scientists new information on the movement of solar to Nasa, these early images also help the mission team confirm that PUNCH's cameras are working properly. What is Nasa's PUNCH mission? Nasa's Punch mission is made up four small satellites which are in low Earth orbit, observing the Sun and its to the US Space Agency, the plan is for them to make a global 3D picture of the entire inner heliosphere - that's the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the Sun which surrounds the planets and the Kuiper doing this, Nasa hope to find out more about how the Sun's outermost layer of its atmosphere - called the corona - becomes the solar mission was launched in March 2025 and is expected to last around two years.
