New Pictures Of The Sun
Dazzling new images reveal the 'impossible' on the Sun
The restless bubbling and frothing of the Sun's chaotic surface is astonishing astronomers who have been treated to detailed new images from a Japanese space telescope called Hinode.
Charged particles follow magnetic field lines that rise vertically from a sunspot – an area of strong magnetic field. On the edges of the sunspot, the magnetic field lines bend over to connect to regions of the opposite polarity (Image: Hinode JAXA/NASA)
Long filaments of plasma connect regions of different magnetic polarity in the chromosphere, a thin layer of the Sun's atmosphere lying between its visible surface, or photosphere, and its outer corona (Image: Hinode JAXA/NASA)
S-shaped magnetic loops such as this one on the Sun are more likely than loops of other shapes to unleash radiation and charged particles, which can damage satellites around Earth. Hinode's X-Ray Telescope took this image (Image: JAXA/NASA/SAO)
