2023-07-30 07:13:17
Magnetic waves, which astronomers have just discovered in images sent back by the mission Solar Orbiter, might explain why the corona of our Sun is so hot.
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[EN VIDÉO] Discover extraordinary images of the sun thanks to Solar Orbiter The first images from ESA’s Solar Orbiter have just been released! They reveal the…
As you move away from a heat source, the temperature drops. It is obvious. Except when it comes to our Sun. While its heat is produced at its core, the outermost layer of its atmosphere appears regarding 200 times hotter than its surface. Its crown exceeds one million degrees while its photosphere barely reaches 6,000°C. How can the temperature of the Sun evolve in this way once morest the current? That’s the question astronomers have been asking for some 80 years now.
And data collected by theExtreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) embarked on board the mission Solar Orbiter may well finally provide the answer. Thanks to images of unrivaled resolution in the extreme ultraviolet range – a range only accessible from space, as it is filtered by the Earth’s atmosphere –, researchers from the Royal Observatory of Belgium have indeed been able to observe magnetic waves swirling in the smallest structures of the solar corona. Could their rapid oscillations produce enough energy to heat the atmosphere of our Sun?
The temperature of the Sun’s corona finally explained?
Yes, answer the astronomers. Unlike similar, but slower oscillations that had already been discovered in the past. And for which scientists had estimated that they did not produce enough energy to explain the heating of the solar corona.
The mystery of the solar corona elucidated by new observations
In other images returned by Solar Orbiter, the researchers found other phenomena that might also lead to the observed heating of the corona of our Sun. In the hope of unraveling the threads of the mystery a little more, researchers from the Royal Observatory of Belgium will now focus on the study of the magnetic waves that they have just brought to light. And even try to flush out, still thanks to the EUI, magnetic waves of even higher frequencies.
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