It may look like a still, yellow disk from the Earth, but the surface of the sun is full of movement. In the 1950s, astronomers got their first glimpse of ‘dancing’ solar material, which emits light only in wavelengths invisible to our eyes. Now a new image has revealed how the sun’s magnetism changes in response to the constant movement.
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This illustration lays a depiction of the sun’s magnetic fields over an image captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) on March 12, 2016. The complex overlay of lines can teach scientists about the ways the sun’s magnetism changes in response to the constant movement on and inside the sun. Note how the field lines are densest around active regions – bright spots visible on the sun, but they also link to other magnetically active areas across the Sun.
This magnetic map was created using the PFSS – Potential Field Source Surface – model, a model of the magnetic field in the sun’s atmosphere based on magnetic measurements of the solar surface. The underlying image was taken in extreme ultraviolet wavelengths of 171 angstroms. This type of light is invisible to our eyes but is colorized here in gold.