A unique glance into the Sun's atmosphere
Wednesday, September 25, 2013 - 09:00
in Astronomy & Space
Three months after the flight of the balloon-borne solar observatory Sunrise, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany now present unique insights into the central layer of the Sun's atmosphere, the chromosphere. The Sunrise-data provide the first high-resolution images of this region, lying between the Sun's visible surface and the corona, in ultraviolet light. More prominently than in earlier images, structures with a size of a few hundred kilometres such as bright points or strongly elongated fibrils occurring in close proximity to sunspots become visible in these wavelengths.