Blue Sun Glaring
Explanation:
The Sun is a bubbling ball of extremely hot
gas. In
this false-color
picture,
light blue regions are extremely hot - over 1 million
degrees,
while dark blue regions are slightly cooler. The
camera filter used
was highly sensitive to the emission of
highly charged iron
ions,
which trace the
magnetic field
of the
Sun. The rich structure of
the image shows the great complexity of the
Sun's
inner
corona. A small active region
can be seen just to the right and above center. This picture
was taken in ultraviolet (extremely
blue) light by the
Extreme-ultraviolet
Imaging Telescope
(EIT) on board the
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
(SOHO) spacecraft, which is orbiting the
Sun
just ahead of the
Earth, at the
L1 point.
SOHO was launched in 1995 and will continually monitor the
Sun
for several years.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
