BRENT: The huge coronal hole close to the south pole of the Sun was captured by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly tool on Nasa’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, on January 1.
The coronal hole spans about 400,000km at its widest point, Dr C Alex Young, associate director for science for the heliophysics division at Nasa’s Goddard facility, told the Huffington Post. It’s total surface area is about 410 times larger than Earth, he said.
Dean Pesnell, the project scientist for the SDO, wrote in a blog that coronal holes are caused by the magnetic field reaching out into space rather than looping back down onto the surface of the sun.
“Particles moving along those magnetic fields can leave the sun rather than being trapped near the surface. Those trapped particles can heat up and glow, giving us the lovely AIA images. In the parts of the corona where the particles leave the sun, the glow is much dimmer and the coronal hole looks dark.”
Coronal holes were first seen in images taken by astronauts in the 1970s, Pesnell said. The holes can remain visible for five years or longer.
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