Flares in the Sun s corona, imaged in 2013. (Image: NASA/SDO, Fair Use)
Crackling away on a cosmic scale, small flares in the solar corona have been a matter of intrigue for researchers, as they are the brightest spots in a solar atmosphere boasting extraordinarily hot temperatures. Now, scientists propose that the little fires everywhere are caused by the convergence of magnetic fields kilometres above the Sun’s surface.
The flares were first spotted in 2020 by Solar Orbiter, the product of a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency and the first spacecraft to get close enough to the Sun with the technology to really see what’s going on. This February, on the first anniversary of its launch, the orbiter made it to the far side of the Sun. Now, twopapers on the flares, nicknamed “campfires” for their relatively small size, have been accepted to be published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. The papers chronicle 1,500 of these events in the solar atm
Lösung für altes Rätsel? Die Sonne ist wegen Lagerfeuern so heiß
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Solar Orbiter: Lagerfeuer könnten rätselhafte Sonnentemperaturen erklären
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