“Coronal Rain” of Sun Captured in New Photographs

Using a ground-based telescope in California, researchers have captured “raindrops” on the Sun called “Coronal Rain“—cool streams of plasma that fall back towards the solar surface—for the first time in previously unheard-of detail.

These brightly colored pictures provide the most in-depth look yet at the dynamic behavior of the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, revealing both massive plasma arches and delicate stream-like formations.

A process known as “Coronal rain” takes place, when scorching plasma in the corona cools down, shrinks, and go down back towards the surface of the Sun with the help of magnetic field lines.

In addition to the complicated structures seen in the new observations are these streams and solar prominences, which are big, looping arcs of plasma.

The images were colored with synthetic pink hues after being captured in hydrogen-alpha light. Time-lapse imaging technology, which corrects for distortions brought on by Earth’s turbulent atmosphere, was employed to take them.

Researchers from the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) and the National Solar Observatory of the U.S. National Science Foundation have contributed to this accomplishment. This week, Nature published their findings.

Vasyl Yurchyshyn, a research professor at NJIT and co-author of the study said:

“These are the most detailed observations to date, showing features, we’ve never seen before — and some that we still don’t fully understand.”

The Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) in California where the cutting-edge adaptive optics technology named Cona has been installed, took pictures with the help of 1.6-meter Goode Solar Telescope. This device adjusts in real time for aberrations in the Earth’s upper atmosphere using a laser.

According to Nicolas Gorceix, head observer of BBSO:

“Cona is like a supercharged autofocus for the sky.”

The device significantly increases image resolution by reshaping a specialized mirror 2,200 times per second. With Cona, scientists can now see structures as small as 63 kilometers (39 miles), whereas previously it was challenging to detect solar phenomena smaller than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the earth.

The Sun’s corona, which means “crown” in Latin, is one of the solar system’s most enigmatic features. The corona is only seen during total solar eclipses since it is typically obscured by the photosphere, or the Sun’s surface brightness.

A long-standing conundrum in solar physics is that, although being less dense, it is several hundred thousand degrees hotter than the Sun’s surface.

Solar physicists are particularly interested in this area since it is where the solar wind, a constant flow of charged particles, originates. This stream can create stunning auroras and cause geomagnetic storms when it interacts with Earth’s magnetic field.

The Cona system is currently being placed at the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Maui, Hawaii, after undergoing successful testing at BBSO. The largest solar telescope in the world, with an aperture of 4 meters, promises even more profound understanding of the intricate outer layers of the Sun.