#THE SUN CORONA FULL#

#THE SUN CORONA FULL#

The resulting images provide a full frontal view of the sun and its corona, highlighting the ever-changing connections between the gas captured by the sun’s magnetic field and the gas escaping into interplanetary space. These processed images, including the one above, imitate the blocking-out effect that occurs during a total solar eclipse, revealing the highly dynamic nature of the inner corona. The material in the corona is an extremely hot but very tenuous plasma. It extends many thousands of kilometers (miles) above the visible 'surface' of the Sun, gradually transforming into the solar wind that flows outward through our solar system. The instrument essentially fills the gap created by the limitations of the coronograph.ĬfA astronomers Steven Crammer and Alec Engell developed a computer program for processing the AIA images of the corona. The corona is the outer atmosphere of the Sun. The AIA allows astronomers to “follow the corona all the way down to the sun’s surface,” Leon Golub of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in a statement from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, or CfA.

The temperature of the corona is over a million degrees. The corona can be seen only during solar eclipses, when the main radiation from the Sun's surface is blocked by the passage of the Moon or with special instruments. The material in the corona is a tremendously hot yet tenuous plasma. The corona has been found to emit X-ray radiation (the corona is a plasma at temperatures greater than a million degrees a plasma will radiate a lot of X-rays). It stretches many thousands of kilometres (miles) beyond the Sun's apparent 'surface,' gradually converting into solar wind, which travels outward across our solar system. The corona is usually hidden by the bright light of the Suns surface.

Even before the mission, solar astronomers didn’t have to wait around for solar eclipses and clear skies to get a view of the corona - but their tool of choice, called a coronograph, partially blocks the area immediately surrounding the sun, leaving only the outer corona visible. The effect is akin to holding your hand in front of your face as you drive into the sun. The corona is the Sun's outer atmosphere. The Short Answer: The Suns corona is the outermost part of the Suns atmosphere. SDO was launched last February on a mission to study the sun and its influence on Earth and near-Earth space.