NASA’s NuSTAR Observatory Pinpoints Hottest Spots on the Sun
upstart writes:
NASA's NuSTAR Observatory Pinpoints Hottest Spots on the Sun:
Every day, astronomers learn more about the stars spread around the cosmos, but there's still plenty to learn about the star closest to Earth. NASA has released a new composite image of the Sun featuring data from the NuSTAR space telescope. It reveals some of the hottest areas of the Sun, which may help scientists unravel a stellar mystery that has remained unsolved for decades.
[...] NASA believes the NuSTAR data could help scientists understand why the Sun's corona is so hot. While the Sun's surface is a toasty 5,500 degrees Celsius, the corona reaches scorching temperatures of more than 1 million degrees Celsius. The Sun's heat radiates out from the core, so no one is certain how the star's atmosphere ends up so much hotter than the surface. Solar flares don't happen often enough to keep the corona so hot, but nanoflares might be the key. That's what you're seeing in the blue regions above.
Individual nanoflares, small eruptions originating deep inside the Sun, are too faint compared with the blazing brightness of the Sun to appear in today's instruments. However, NuSTAR can detect the high-energy output when multiple nanoflares occur close together. This could help physicists determine how often nanoflares happen and how much energy they release.
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