ESA captures spectacular video of furry Sun

The ESA’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager took a close look at the Sun (and by close we mean over 100 million kilometers away, but that’s closer than you’ll ever get), as part of a joint mission with NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which is a mere million kilometers away. The EUI took a look at part of the Sun about to emit solar wind, which Parker would then fly though and measure, and the video taken shows the closest look at the Sun’s outer atmosphere – the corona – in detail never seen before. The odd strands of plasma pulled away from the chromosphere by the magnetic field, called ‘spicules,’ give the Sun an oddly furry appearance, while bright patches of ‘coronal moss’ appear near the base of the bigger ejections. The biggest ejection of all, though, occurred in almost the center of the video. It looks tiny in comparison to the rest of the Sun, but looks are deceiving: that small eruption could swallow the Earth whole. The video also captured one of the most unusual phenomena seen on the Sun: rain, as plasma falls back to the Sun. However, that ‘rain’ is extremely hot, at about 1 million degrees Celsius.