Glimpses of Coronal Rain

Despite its incredible heat, our sun‘s corona is so faint compared to the rest of the star that we can rarely make it out except during a total solar eclipse. But a new adaptive optic technique has given us coronal images with unprecedented detail.

These images come from the 1.6-meter Goode Solar Telescope at Big Bear Solar Observatory, and they required some 2,200 adjustments to the instrument’s mirror every second to counter atmospheric distortions that would otherwise blur the images. With the new technique, the team was able to sharpen their resolution from 1,000 kilometers all the way down to 63 kilometers, revealing heretofore unseen details of plasma from solar prominences dancing in the sun’s magnetic field and cooling plasma falling as coronal rain.

The team hope to upgrade the 4-meter Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope with the technology next, which will enable even finer imagery. (Image credit: Schmidt et al./NJIT/NSO/AURA/NSF; research credit: D. Schmidt et al.; via Gizmodo)