Closest Picture Ever Taken of the Sun Reveals "Campfires."

[NNadir]

The following is a news item, open sourced, in the current issue of Nature: This photo of the Sun is the closest ever taken.

This image — the closest ever taken of the Sun — shows the corona teeming with thousands of miniature solar flares, which scientists have dubbed campfires. The pictures are the first released from the Solar Orbiter mission, led by the European Space Agency.

“When the first images came in, my first thought was this is not possible, it can’t be that good,” David Berghmans, principal investigator for the orbiter’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager instrument, told a press briefing on 16 July. “It was much better than we dared to hope for.”

“The Sun might look quiet at the first glance, but when we look in detail, we can see those miniature flares everywhere we look,” said Berghmans, a solar physicist at the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Brussels, in a statement.

The fires are just millionths or billionths of the size of the solar flares visible from Earth...

[DarthDem]

1. Wow

Beautiful. Awe-inspiring.

[customerserviceguy]

2. Solar S'mores!

Sounds like a snack idea that's out of this world.

[flor-de-jasmim]

3. Looks like a special effects wall, or part of an Italian master's painting.

[Sneederbunk]

4. Smokey the Bear's worst nightmare.