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The sun is a gigantic and churning gas ball, with an atmosphere that projects streams and particle particles into space. Now, astrophysicists have found that in the atmosphere of the sun, what may seem like a cosmic clutter hides a beautiful order.
In particular, they found and imaged finely detailed streamers, blobs and puffs that appear in the outer crown. the sun's atmosphere that starts about 2,100 miles (2,100 kilometers) from the sun's surface and extends over 10 million miles (16 million km), according to their study published July 18 in The Astrophysical Journal.
or the absence of it, found inside the crown. "Anyone who has seen an eclipse knows that the crown is not homogeneous in the same way as the Earth's atmosphere: there are dense regions and rarefied areas everywhere," said researcher Craig DeForest. Principal at the Southwest Research Institute. Boulder, Colorado. [See Gorgeous Images of the Sun’s Corona in Simulations]
And these different densities are driven by the sun's magnetic field, he added. Beyond this low-resolution understanding, however, they were somehow left in the dark.
Up to now. "By looking through coronagraphs (ordinary visible-light cameras with special pieces of metal at the front, to block the direct sunlight), we can see individual structures in the crown," writes DeForest in Live Science. aboard NASA's STEREO-A spacecraft, which orbits the sun between Earth and Venus.
One of the main reasons why DeForest and his colleagues observed the relatively fine details inside the crown. the data – such as that of the light of the background stars – used to create the images. And what they saw was a bit mind-blowing.
Here's what they found: Once they got rid of the "noise," the team found structures in the streamers of the crown – dense solar wind flows leaving the sun – just 12,500 miles (20,000 km) wide. "When we made the best measurements we could use the COR2 instrument, eliminating noise, we found that each light flute is made of a myriad of smaller, fiber-like strands," said DeForest. "These strands are the" structure "we are talking about in the paper." [During Eclipses, Astronomers Try to Reveal the Secrets of the Solar Wind]
And, DeForest said, these "fibers" could be even smaller, so the instrument could not solve them.
They also found a lot of blobs, and yes, that's technical word. It was invented in the 1990s by Neil Sheeley of the Naval Research Laboratory, who saw the relatively small clouds of charged gas and created accelerated films of the phenomenon.
"They are tiny (compared to the corona, but big compared to the Earth) plasma puffs that are released by the sun," said DeForest. "They are common enough that we can usually find at least some in a coronagraph, but rare enough that they are usually only in one or two dashes of the crown. "
In this new study, he adds:" showed us as visible traces so far are only wide tail of a wide distribution of them.blobs, puffs and other compact compact features are everywhere. "
Beyond showing some pretty cool features of the sun's crown, the search could" The outer part of the crown – the transition between the sun's atmosphere and the solar wind that fills the interplanetary void – is almost the last unexplored part of our solar system, "said DeForest …" Nobody really knows how the crown is disconnecting from the sun. "
For example, deep in space, the solar wind may blow in violent violent storms but scientists do not know what triggers this "turbulence" in the first place
If the sun generates this turbulence, then the resulting complex structures should be visible from the beginning of the trip from the solar wind.But up to now, scientists did not have a clear enough view of the crown to know in one way or another.
The new view could f Provide answers. "What we have found is that each brilliant banner in the outer crown is made from a myriad of smaller, fiber-like strands, up to well-sized sizes. less than a tenth of the smallest objects we could see before, "said DeForest. "It's interesting because it means that the outer crown is just as strange and inhomogeneous as the inner crown, which gives a new insight into the big questions of solar physics, like how the solar wind is accelerating in the empty. "
The Parker Solar Probe, which will begin a seven-year mission this month, will explore this mystery and others even more deeply, including why the sun's crown is 300 times warmer than the lower atmosphere , called photosphere.] Original article on Live Science .
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