Parker Solar Probe and the curious case of the hot corona
Something mysterious is going on at the Sun. In defiance of all logic, its atmosphere gets much, much hotter the farther it stretches from the Sun's blazing surface.
Something mysterious is going on at the Sun. In defiance of all logic, its atmosphere gets much, much hotter the farther it stretches from the Sun's blazing surface.
Space Exploration
Jul 27, 2018
67
199
Like most solar sounding rockets, the second flight of the FOXSI instrument - short for Focusing Optics X-ray Solar Imager - lasted 15 minutes, with just six minutes of data collection. But in that short time, the cutting-edge ...
Space Exploration
Oct 13, 2017
0
14
(Phys.org)—A team of researchers from the U.S., Japan and Switzerland has found possible evidence of a source of energy that could be responsible for heating the sun's corona. In their paper published in the journal Nature ...
Imagine standing around a roaring campfire, roasting s'mores. You feel the warmth of the flames as the marshmallows crackle. Now back away. You get cooler, right?
Space Exploration
Dec 1, 2016
2
20
Modern telescopes and satellites have helped us measure the blazing hot temperatures of the sun from afar. Mostly the temperatures follow a clear pattern: The sun produces energy by fusing hydrogen in its core, so the layers ...
Space Exploration
Aug 25, 2015
1
717
A NASA-funded sounding rocket is getting ready to launch to give insight into one of the biggest mysteries in solar physics—the fact the sun's atmosphere is some 1,000 times hotter than its surface. The mission, developed ...
Space Exploration
Aug 24, 2015
0
8
Solar physicists have captured the first direct observational signatures of resonant absorption, thought to play an important role in solving the "coronal heating problem" which has defied explanation for over 70 years.
Space Exploration
Aug 23, 2015
25
775
For the first time, a mission designed to set its eyes on black holes and other objects far from our solar system has turned its gaze back closer to home, capturing images of our sun. NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope ...
Space Exploration
Dec 23, 2014
0
0
Daniel Wolf Savin and Michael Hahn have been fascinated by the universe since they were boys. For Savin, a senior research scientist in the Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, discovering Albert Einstein at age 12 spurred the ...
Astronomy
Nov 18, 2013
2
0