![]() They are huge, extending above most other solar prominences, and can be seen during solar eclipses.Īnd all those spots? The bright one is Mercury in the distance, while the dark ones are just imaging artifacts from the background correction processing of the image. In the image above, the bright streaks coming from the left are jets of material called coronal streamers – also known as helmet streamers – emanating from the sun itself, which is just out of view. Space scientists presented the image during the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington D.C. The Parker Solar Probe has now come within the sun’s corona or outer atmosphere. Consider that Earth itself is 93 million miles (150 million km) – and the innermost planet Mercury is about 36 million miles (58 million km) – from the sun. Parker Solar Probe acquired the image above – the first photo from inside the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, the part of the sun we see in photos of total solar eclipses – when the craft was only 16.9 million miles (27.2 million km) from the sun’s surface. NASA released the photos on December 12, 2018. It has just sent back the first photos ever from inside the sun’s atmosphere. Up to now, all photos of the sun have been taken from a great distant from the sun itself, given the sun’s extreme heat.īut now, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has gone where no spacecraft has gone before, flying much closer to the sun’s surface than any other probe. The sun is a magnificent, hot, glowing ball of gas with its enormous solar prominences of hot plasma – much larger than Earth – arcing out into the surrounding blackness. We’ve all seen stunning images of the sun, both from the ground and from telescopes in space. Image via NASA/Naval Research Laboratory/Parker Solar Probe. The dark spots are a result of background correction. The bright object near the center is the sun’s innermost planet, Mercury. Parker Solar Probe acquired this image – 1st-ever photo taken from inside the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona – on December 8, 2018. ![]()
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