HONG KONG: “NuSTAR will give us a special look at the sun, from the deepest to the peak components of its atmosphere,” stated David Smith, a lunar physicist and member of the NuSTAR team at University of California, Santa Cruz.
Solar scientists initial thought of using NuSTAR to study the sun about seven years ago, after the space telescope’s style and construction was currently underway (the telescope launched into space in 2012). Smith had contacted the principal investigator, Fiona Harrison of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who mulled it more than and became excited by the concept.
“At initial I believed the whole thought was crazy,” says Harrison. “Why would we have the most sensitive high energy X-ray telescope ever constructed, designed to peer deep into the universe, appear at anything in our personal back yard?” Smith ultimately convinced Harrison, explaining that faint X-ray flashes predicted by theorists could only be observed by NuSTAR.
When the sun is also bright for other telescopes such as NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, NuSTAR can safely look at it with no the threat of damaging its detectors. The sun is not as bright in the greater-energy X-rays detected by NuSTAR, a aspect that depends on the temperature of the sun’s atmosphere.
This very first solar image from NuSTAR demonstrates that the telescope can in truth collect data about sun. And it provides insight into questions about the remarkably high temperatures that are located above sunspots — cool, dark patches on the sun. Future pictures will offer even improved information as the sun winds down in its solar cycle.
“We will come into our own when the sun gets quiet,” stated Smith, explaining that the sun’s activity will dwindle more than the subsequent handful of years.
With NuSTAR’s high-energy views, it has the potential to capture hypothesized nanoflares — smaller versions of the sun’s giant flares that erupt with charged particles and higher-energy radiation. Nanoflares, really should they exist, may well clarify why the sun’s outer atmosphere, known as the corona, is sizzling hot, a mystery named the “coronal heating dilemma.” The corona is, on typical, 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit (1 million degrees Celsius), while the surface of the sun is fairly cooler at 10,800 Fahrenheit (6,000 degrees Celsius). It is like a flame coming out of an ice cube. Nanoflares, in mixture with flares, may perhaps be sources of the intense heat.
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