“Rapid magnetic #oscillations” may be the new buzzword.
Solar Orbiter, the ESA/NASA Sun Explorer developed with the strong support of Agenzia Spaziale Italiana – ASI, is providing crucial elements to explain the “solar #corona paradox”: the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere reaches temperatures up to about 2 million °C, much higher than the 5.500 °C of the surface closest to the core heat source. A ‘counter—intuitive’ phenomenon.
Solar Orbiter has 11 cutting-edge technological #instruments aboard, including METIS (wavelength multi-bands coronagraph) made by OHB Italia S.p.A. together in a team of scientists and industries.
#METIS can observe the structure and the dynamics of the full solar corona simultaneously in the visible and ultraviolet bands. It is using broad-band, polarized and narrow-band imaging technology: a unique capability combining three different wavelength bands by means of a single telescope. The corona region is crucial to better understand the solar atmospheric phenomena and the process governing the expansion of solar plasma into interplanetary space.
The #discovery in this case starts from the images taken by the probe’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (Eui), a camera that detects extreme high-energy ultraviolet light emitted by the #Sun. Fast-moving small-scale magnetic #waves were discovered swirling on the Sun’s surface.
These oscillations, visible within the blue, green and red rectangles in the photos below (zoomed to the center of the Sun made by the High-Resolution Imager- HRI), were each found to be less than 10.000 kilometers wide.
The main question the scientists asked was whether the #energy from these new, fast oscillations was greater than the ones from similar, but slower, oscillations already known.
The research, which consists of a meta-analysis i.e., a statistical analysis performed on multiple previous studies, found that the new high-frequency and fast waves make a more significant contribution to the #warming of the solar corona than the slower, low-frequency magnetic waves.
This finding suggests that while the low-frequency waves are not able to produce enough energy to explain the #hugetemperature difference between the Sun’s surface and the outer atmosphere, the fast oscillations now discovered by Solar Orbiter could, on the other hand, play a crucial role in keeping the Sun’s atmosphere at millions of degrees.
Solar Orbiter is revealing more and more amazing #secrets of our mother-Star…
Stay tuned and read more on #GlobalScienceMagazin: https://lnkd.in/dbzK2xWr
Photo credits: Solar Orbiter/Eui Team.
OHB Italia Team is wishing you a happy and relaxing #SUMMER BREAK. See U in September!
www.ohb-italia.it
European Space Agency – ESA NASA – National Aeronautics and Space Administration #solacorona #spacetelescope #satellite
