Technology

Picture of the Day: The Sun's Many Layers

By Jared Keller
sunlayers.jpg

The Sun looks the same to everyone on Earth: bright and yellow. But using special instruments designed to filter UV light, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center can generate these incredible STEREO spacecraft images, highlighting the different materials making up the star. Each STEREO image filters the Sun into four wavelengths of extreme UV light. Each frame is colorized so that scientists can instantly recognized which wavelength they are observing, and each wavelength is imaging different material at different layers and temperatures.

Image: NASA/GSFC/STEREO/Flickr.

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About the Author

Jared Keller is a journalist based in New York. He has written for Bloomberg Businessweek, Pacific Standard, and Al Jazeera America, and is a former associate editor for The Atlantic.