Astronomers discover “feathers” in the sun’s crown

Using data from NASA and advanced image processing technology, astrophysicists from the United States and Great Britain have discovered thin feather-like structures in the solar corona that form the current of the solar wind. The Astrophysical Journal reports that the solar corona is made up of plasma, an ionized gas that is controlled by a complex combination magnetic field in the sun’s atmosphere. The surface of the sun is punctuated by constantly changing sets of closed lines and open magnetic field lines, from which the solar wind blows.

The sun’s magnetic field and associated solar winds shape space weather conditions in and around the solar system, and solar wind disturbances affect humans and space devices. The open areas of the sun’s magnetic field create coronal holes, which are dark spots of low intensity. Within days, some of these holes release fountains of solar material called the “tail” (column), which can be seen clearly in ultraviolet rays and monitored by the NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).

Scientists were able, using this observatory and this cutting-edge image processing technology, to discover that this solar material is made up of fine filaments, which they called “feathers”. If the size of this “tail” is 100,000 kilometers, the width of the wire is between 3 and 7,000 kilometers. The leader of the research team, Vadim Uritsky of the American Catholic University of Washington and the Goddard Space Flight Center, says: “The importance of small structures and ongoing operations. In the sun, to understand the solar wind system and space weather in general. It has become clear to scientists that the “feathers” are not only a component of the “tail”, but rather the basic element of the “tail”, as its brightness is directly related to the number of “feathers” . Scientists also, that each “feather” vibrates automatically and independently, which allowed scientists to assume that the behavior of these structures may be the cause of local disturbances of the solar wind.

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