Scientists Discover Complex Plasma Structure in Sun’s Middle Atmosphere

Scientists Discover Complex Plasma Structure in Sun’s Middle Atmosphere

Scientists have made a significant discovery about the sun’s middle atmosphere, finding a complex, dynamic, web-like plasma structure that may be responsible for the solar wind, a constant stream of charged particles that flows off the sun. This discovery was made through rare observations of the middle corona, a region of the sun’s atmosphere located about 650,000 miles above its surface, which is typically only visible during total solar eclipses.

Dan Seaton, a solar physicist at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado and one of the study’s authors, stated that the results of the study were very exciting, as they provide the first high-quality observations that completely unite our observations of the sun and the heliosphere as a single system. The middle corona, which is located between the sun’s surface and its outer atmosphere called the corona, has been the least monitored region of the solar atmosphere, partly due to a lack of observations of the sun’s corona at heights below 1.3 million miles.

In August 2021, researchers made first-of-their-kind observations of the middle corona in extreme ultraviolet wavelengths, using advanced instruments with extended fields of view. These observations revealed that solar wind structures originate in the middle corona, providing the first comprehensive insight into the emergence of solar winds. Solar wind is an important phenomenon that influences every planet in the solar system, and is an example of what scientists call space weather, a collection of ways that the sun and its outbursts can affect Earth.

Space weather can destroy electronic equipment, weaken radio communication, add noise to cell phone reception, and knock out power grids, but scientists do not yet understand the exact mechanisms that eject solar winds and other space weather, making these events nearly impossible to forecast. However, new observations coupled with data from additional space probes and computer models have revealed a complex plasma network in the middle corona.

An international team of researchers analyzed data from a month-long observation campaign using the Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) on NOAA’s GOES-17 weather satellite, which has an extended field of view that captured images of not only the center of the sun but also its sides, providing an unusual glimpse at this region’s structure and evolution. Using this data, the team tracked a pair of coronal holes, patches of the sun that appear dark and mark where the sun’s magnetic field is open to space and expelling material, as they rotated across the solar disk.

When the coronal holes appeared at the sun’s east and west edges, the researchers discovered the middle corona to be a highly structured coronal web called the “S-web.” This complex web is made of magnetized plasma structures that continuously interact and reconnect, and the researchers saw this mechanism at play as it sparked solar wind streams above the coronal web.

The findings from this study could be useful for a NASA mission targeting launch in 2023, the Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH). This two-year mission will use 3D imaging to capture the sun’s outer corona and the region of the solar system nearest to it, with a goal to better understand how the corona generates solar wind. Seaton, who is the science operations lead for PUNCH, stated that now that we can image the sun’s middle corona, we can connect what PUNCH sees back to its origins and have a more complete view of how the solar wind interacts with the rest of the solar system.

The middle corona, which is located between the sun’s surface and its outer atmosphere called the corona, is typically only visible to humans during total solar eclipses, when the moon blocks out most of the sun’s light. This region of the sun’s atmosphere has been the least monitored, partly due to a lack of observations of the sun’s corona at heights below 1.3 million miles. However, the recent observations of the middle corona using advanced instruments with extended fields of view have provided the first comprehensive insight into the emergence of solar winds and the mechanisms behind solar wind structures.

Solar wind is an important phenomenon that influences every planet in the solar system, and is an example of what scientists call space weather, a collection of ways that the sun and its outbursts can affect Earth. Space weather can destroy electronic equipment, weaken radio communication, add noise to cell phone reception, and knock out power grids, but scientists do not yet fully understand the mechanisms that eject solar winds and other space weather, making these events nearly impossible to forecast.

The recent observations of the middle corona have revealed a complex plasma network in this region of the sun’s atmosphere, which could provide important insight into the mechanisms behind solar winds and other space weather events. An international team of researchers analyzed data from a month-long observation campaign using the Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) on the GOES-17 weather satellite, which captured images of the center and sides of the sun, providing an unusual glimpse at this region’s structure and evolution.

Using this data, the team tracked a pair of coronal holes, patches of the sun that appear dark and mark where the sun’s magnetic field is open to space and expelling material, as they rotated across the solar disk. When the coronal holes appeared at the sun’s east and west edges, the researchers discovered the middle corona to be a highly structured coronal web called the “S-web.” This complex web is made of magnetized plasma structures that continuously interact and reconnect, and the researchers saw this mechanism at play as it sparked solar wind streams above the coronal web.

The findings from this study could be useful for a NASA mission targeting launch in 2023, the Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH). This two-year mission will use 3D imaging to capture the sun’s outer corona and the region of the solar system nearest to it, with a goal to better understand how the corona generates solar wind. Seaton, who is the science operations lead for PUNCH, stated that now that we can image the sun’s middle corona, we can connect what PUNCH sees back to its origins and have a more complete view of how the solar wind interacts with the rest of the solar system.

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