(SDO/NASA via SWNS)
By Dean Murray
Astronomers’ hearts were a-flutter this week when a butterfly-shaped hole appeared in the Sun.
The giant coronal hole was spotted facing Earth, likely firing solar winds at our planet that could lead to spectacular auroras.
A coronal hole is a cooler, less dense area in the Sun’s outer atmosphere where magnetic field lines open into space, allowing fast solar wind to escape.
(SDO/NASA via SWNS)
Science website EarthScience said: “A large coronal hole has rotated into a geoeffective position, where it’s capable of affecting Earth. And it should now be sending its fast solar wind our way.”
The spectacle was captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), a spacecraft that keeps an eye on our star from about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) away.