Web Desk (LTN NEWS): The picture was taken last week, and the agency tweeted it with the caption, “Today, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory caught the sun smiling. Seen in ultraviolet light, these dark patches on the sun are called coronal holes, and they are places where solar wind fast gushes out into space.”
The Solar Dynamics Observatory is a branch of NASA that tries to figure out how and why solar activity affects space weather. Launched on February 11, 2010, the observatory uses its spacecraft to measure the sun’s interior, atmosphere, magnetic field, and energy output.
Ever since the image was released on the internet, many users have compared the idea of the smiling sun to a carved-up Halloween pumpkin, a lion, Stay Puf[t] marshmallow man from Ghostbusters, and the popular sun character from the children’s show, Teletubbies.
Solar storms are a variety of eruptions of mass and energy from the solar surface, deforming the Earth’s magnetic field.
