NASA captures a Halloween Sun

This fiery jack o’ lantern is actually an image of our Sun captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which observes our host star as it orbits Earth and is one of many spacecraft dedicated to the study of the Sun.

The active regions in the image are brighter because those areas emit more light and energy. They are actually intense magnetic fields hovering in the Sun’s corona; the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere.

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Observatory NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory

Release date 14 October 2014

Image credit NASA/SDO