Happy Valentine's Day! Love, Your Sun
Heart From The Sun SAO/NASA/JAXA/NAOJThe sun is just bursting with love and 14-million-degree plasma. This lovely heart-shaped protuberance is a superheated plasma curled up into the solar corona, erupting from a particularly active region on the sun. The Hinode X-ray telescope (it means "dawn" in Japanese) captured this image last fall, and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics shared it with us in honor of Valentine's Day. "What better way to say ‘I love you' than with heart-shaped, 8-million Kelvin plasma? Print this out with the tagline, 'You are my sunshine,' and you're good to go," writes Patrick McCauley, support scientist at the CfA's solar and stellar X-ray group. (On second thought, just buy chocolates.) The image was taken through a filter that captures material around 8 million degrees Kelvin, which is about 14.4 million degrees Fahrenheit. The surface of the sun doesn't even get that hot; the corona reaches these temperatures through...