Ethereal scenes of flowing super-heated material may help explain why atmosphere is hotter than surface
The sun’s otherworldly landscape, including coronal moss, solar rain and 10,000km-tall spires of gas, is revealed in footage from the Solar Orbiter spacecraft.
The observations, beamed back by the European Space Agency probe, reveal feathery, hair-like structures made of plasma and also capture eruptions and showers of relatively cooler material falling to the surface. Scientists say that the observations of the sun’s complex surface dynamics could help resolve the question of why the sun’s atmosphere is so much hotter than its surface – a longstanding paradox in solar physics.
