The photo, which was taken last week, was posted on Twitter by the agency with the statement, “Today, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory caught the sun ‘smiling.'” These black spots on the sun are coronal holes and are regions where rapid solar wind gushes out into space when observed in ultraviolet light.
The aim of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory is to learn more about how solar activity influences and creates space weather. The observatory, which was launched into orbit on February 11, 2010, uses its spacecraft to measure the sun’s interior, atmosphere, magnetic field, and energy output.
Since the picture of the sun hit the internet, many individuals have drawn comparisons between it and many objects, including a carved-out Halloween pumpkin, a lion, the Stay Puf[t] marshmallow man from Ghostbusters, and the well-known sun character from Teletubbies.
However, as reported, experts are worried that the sun’s coronal holes might be a sign of a solar storm that will impact Earth. The image was also followed by a warning from Spaceweather.com that said, “The cheerful… is spewing a triple stream of the solar wind at Earth.”
The magnetic field of the Earth is distorted by various eruptions of mass and energy from the solar surface known as solar storms.
