Comet Lovejoy Offers New Clues to Sun's Corona (2 of 5) (IMAGE)

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Comet Lovejoy Offers New Clues to Sun's Corona (2 of 5)

Caption

This multi-wavelength emission from the portion of the solar corona traversed by comet Lovejoy (magenta arc). Each color represents a different wavelength of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light. The unique temperature sensitivity of each spectral window provides complementary information into the distribution of hot plasma in the solar corona, which is typically around one to three million degrees. The top row shows NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) images. These are compared to emission generated from a computer model of the corona in the bottom row. This comparison was used to understand how well the model describes the large-scale plasma structure of the corona during this time period. This image relates to a paper that appeared in the June 7, 2013, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by Cooper Downs at Predictive Science Inc. in San Diego, Calif., and colleagues was titled, "Probing the Solar Magnetic Field with a Sun-Grazing Comet."

Credit

[Image courtesy of Cooper Downs]

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