2023-07-07 06:00:09
The Sun also has its own “shooting stars”. These fireballs are created by coronal rain, a phenomenon in which hot plasma from the Sun condenses into the solar corona.
The “shooting stars” (marked in red) were discovered in the coronal rain, a rain of plasma in the outer atmosphere (The word atmosphere can have several meanings:) of the Sun (The Sun (Sol in Latin, Helios or Ήλιος in Greek) is the star…).
Image: Patrick Antolin.
Background image: ESA/Solar Orbiter EUI/HRI
These fireballs are not really shooting stars as we see them on Earth. This is the result of a phenomenon called coronal rain. This process occurs when hot plasma cools and condenses in the Sun’s corona, the outer (Do not confuse valence layer with valence) layer of its atmosphere. The crown itself is unimaginably hot (In common parlance, the words heat and temperature are often equivalent in meaning:…), burning at over 1.1 million (One million (1,000,000) is the natural number following nine hundred and ninety-nine…) of degrees Celsius. This temperature (The temperature is a physical quantity measured using a thermometer and…) is much hotter than the surface (A surface generally designates the superficial layer of an object. The term a…) of the Sun, which is “only” 5500°C. However, when colder pockets appear in the corona, the material (A material is a material of natural or artificial origin that man shapes…) diffused from the atmosphere quickly condenses into clusters of plasma.
This astonishing discovery was made thanks to data from the solar orbiter (In the field of astronautics, an orbiter is a vessel in orbit around a planet….) solar (SolO) of the European Space Agency (L European Space Agency (ESA) is…).
View from SolO on March 30, 2022 showing a partial section of the Sun with gas at 1 million degrees. Brilliant coronal showers dot the foreground.
Image: Patrick Antolin.
Background image: ESA/Solar Orbiter EUI/HRI
The SolO observed the formation of coronal rain just 49 million kilometers from the Sun. These plasma balls can reach up to 700 km in diameter (In a circle or a sphere, the diameter is a line segment passing through the center…). They then fall towards the surface of the Sun. The magnetic field lines (In physics, the magnetic field (or magnetic induction, or flux density…) of the Sun act as guide rails, helping the plasma to descend.
Missions like NASA’s SolO and Parker Solar Probe will continue to study the surface and corona of the Sun over the next few years, allowing scientists to learn even more regarding coronal rain and other solar phenomena.
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#Plasma #shooting #stars #raining #Sun
