NASA Say Our Sun Looks Like It’s Swallowing Itself

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NASA reveals that a huge hole has appeared on the surface of the Sun which appears to be swallowing the giant star up

NASA have revealed that a huge hole has appeared on the Sun, which covers a staggering ten percent of its entire surface. 

Footage captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory between May 17 and 19 shows a huge black hole on the Sun’s upper half, known as a coronal hole.

Express.co.uk reports:

A NASA spokesman said: “Coronal holes are low-density regions of the sun’s atmosphere, known as the corona.

“Because they contain little solar material, they have lower temperatures and thus appear much darker than their surroundings.

“Coronal holes are visible in certain types of extreme ultraviolet light, which is typically invisible to our eyes, but is colorised here in purple for easy viewing.”

NASA says the huge hole is actually not of great concern, but it remains unclear why the coronal holes actually form.

But it does mean that large amounts of solar winds, that cause the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights to form, have been blasted to Earth.

These would weak havoc with our communications and blast us with cancer-causing UV rays, if it were not for the Earth’s magnetosphere which shields us from them.

The spokesman added: “These coronal holes are important to understanding the space environment around Earth through which our technology and astronauts travel.

“Coronal holes are the source of a high-speed wind of solar particles that streams off the sun some three times faster than the slower wind elsewhere.

“While it’s unclear what causes coronal holes, they correlate to areas on the sun where magnetic fields soar up and away, without looping back down to the surface, as they do elsewhere.”

It could also means the large holes are getting bigger.

Last October, NASA released images showing a smaller hole, which was the size of 50 Earths, had formed in the same area.

At that time, it was believed to have been one of the biggest ever recorded.

2 Comments

  1. Feb 12, 2016 SDO: Year 6 Ultra-HD NASA Goddard

    The sun is always changing and NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory is always watching. Launched on Feb. 11, 2010, SDO keeps a 24-hour eye on the entire disk of the sun, with a prime view of the graceful dance of solar material coursing through the sun’s atmosphere, the corona. SDO’s sixth year in orbit was no exception. This video shows that entire sixth year — from Jan. 1, 2015, to Jan. 28, 2016, as one time-lapse sequence. At full quality on YouTube, this video is ultra-high definition 3840×2160 and 29.97 frames per second. Each frame represents 2 hours. A downloadable version has a frame rate of 59.94 with each frame representing 1 hour.

    https://youtu.be/8MImmQvqCSg

  2. I am not buying what they are selling!

    Feb 12, 2016 SDO: Year 6 Ultra-HD NASA Goddard

    The sun is always changing and NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory is always watching. Launched on Feb. 11, 2010, SDO keeps a 24-hour eye on the entire disk of the sun, with a prime view of the graceful dance of solar material coursing through the sun’s atmosphere, the corona. SDO’s sixth year in orbit was no exception. This video shows that entire sixth year — from Jan. 1, 2015, to Jan. 28, 2016, as one time-lapse sequence. At full quality on YouTube, this video is ultra-high definition 3840×2160 and 29.97 frames per second. Each frame represents 2 hours. A downloadable version has a frame rate of 59.94 with each frame representing 1 hour.

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