On a sunny day, human eyes can’t see all the light the Sun emits. But in a new image captured by NASA’s NuSTAR telescope, some of that hidden light can be seen, including the high-energy X-rays emitted by the hottest material in the Sun’s atmosphere.
The NuSTAR image could help scientists unravel one of the biggest mysteries about the Sun: why its outer atmosphere, the corona, reaches temperatures of more than a million degrees: at least a hundred times hotter than the surface.
“It’s as if the air around the fire is 100 times hotter than the flames.” explains NASA.
According to the North American space agency, the heat of the corona can have as sources the small eruptions in the atmosphere of the Sun, the calls “nanofertas”. “Flares” are “large bursts of heat, light, and visible particles.” “Nanoflares” are “much smaller events, but both produce material even hotter than the average coronal temperature.”
Although individual “nanoflashes” are too faint to see in sunlight, the NuSTAR telescope is able to “detect light from high-temperature material thought to be produced when large numbers of nanoflashes are produced in close proximity to each other.” “.
This ability allows physicists to investigate how often nanoflares occur and how they release energy.
NuSTAR was launched on June 13, 2012 with the goal of observing the hottest, densest, and most energetic celestial objects.
The instrument will be the first of its kind capable of creating cosmic images from high-energy X-rays, the same ones used in medicine to view the human skeleton or in airports to inspect luggage.
NuSTAR will produce images with high resolution, allowing the capture of black holes and “nested” neutron stars in the Milky Way.
Source: TSF
