Mar 21 2007
From The Space Library
NASA released images of the Sun, captured by the X-ray Telescope aboard the international spacecraft Hinode, formerly known as Solar B. The images showed that the Sun’s magnetic field “is much more turbulent and dynamic than previously known.” Richard R. Fisher of the Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate remarked that, for the first time, scientists could detect tiny granules of hot gas rising and falling in the Sun’s magnetized atmosphere. Alan M. Title of Lockheed Martin, also a professor of physics at Stanford University, added that Hinode images revealed irrefutable evidence of the presence of turbulence-driven processes that bring magnetic fields to the Sun’s surface, resulting in an extremely dynamic gaseous envelope around the Sun. A collaborative mission, led by JAXA and including ESA and Britain’s Particle Physics Astronomy Research Council, Hinode had launched on 23 September 2006. Hinode carried three primary instruments—the Solar Optical Telescope, the X-ray Telescope, and the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer—to study the Sun’s magnetic field and how its explosive energy propagates through the various layers of the solar atmosphere.
NASA, “International Spacecraft Reveals Detailed Processes on the Sun,” news release 07-72, 21 March 2007, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/mar/HQ_07072_Hinode_Images_of_Sun.html (accessed 14 October 2009); Jeanna Bryner, “Twisted Solution to Sun’s Mystery Heat,” Space.com, 21 March 2007, http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070321_solarb_update.html (accessed 28 January 2010).
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