The closest images of the sun ever taken reveal ‘campfire’ flares
Get out the marshmallows and toasting sticks. The closest images yet taken of the sun show tiny flares dubbed “campfires,” astronomers announced in a news conference on July 16. The images are the first from Solar Orbiter, a new sun-watching spacecraft that’s a joint project between NASA and the European Space Agency. These never-before-seen campfire flares are “little relatives” of larger solar flares (SN: 9/11/17), powerful magnetic outbursts that shoot bright spurts of radiation into space, said David Berghmans of the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Brussels in a news release. Campfire flares are a million to a billion times as small as typical solar flares. It’s not clear yet whether the flickers are just scaled-down flares, or if the two phenomena have different driving mechanisms. Solar physicists think campfires could help explain one of the biggest solar mysteries: why the solar corona, the sun’s wispy outer atmosphere, is millions of degrees hotter...