Coronal Hole

The Sun is an integral part of our lives, spend some time actually looking at it

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This picture was taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) in the extreme ultraviolet side of the spectrum. The SDO is in geosynchronous orbit with Earth so that it can take pictures of the sun and downlink them to a dedicated ground facility. This picture of the sun features a coronal hole, which is the black area near the center of the photograph. These are holes in the magnetic field of the sun that allow charged particles to spew out into space as solar wind. [1][2]

The sun has a very strong magnetic field. At the surface the magnetic field of the sun is on average only about twice as strong as Earth’s, but the sun has much more surface area. (Sunspots can have as much as 8,000 times the magnetic field strength of Earth.) This means the magnetic field actually stretches far beyond the orbit of Pluto. This is called the interplanetary magnetic field. The interplanetary magnetic field partially dictates the paths solar wind takes. [3]

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