NASA captures a stunning heart on the surface of the Sun: what it means and how it affects us

The Sun is essential for life . This star provides the light and heat necessary for biological processes. It also maintains the planet's thermal balance and regulates both the climate and natural cycles. Without a doubt, the Sun holds everything that revolves around it together, given that it has been the subject of study by the scientific community for decades.

To give a few examples, NASA's Parker Solar Probe aims to understand the behavior of the Sun from an unprecedented distance in order to operate within the Solar corona and collect unique data, a study has revealed an unexpected change in the behavior of the Sun that may affect the Earth's magnetosphere, and recently, an image of the Sun, released by NASA, showing a heart formed by a coronal hole .

In line with this last finding, NASA explains in its official blog that this coronal hole is not an actual hole in the Sun, but a region where the Sun's magnetic field weakens , allowing the constant wind to escape more easily and send bursts of solar particles through the solar system. Furthermore, since the plasma it contains is cooler and less dense than the surrounding plasma, this hole appears as a dark spot on the Sun in extreme ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths.

Is this a threat?

NASA explains that the heart launched a stream of solar particles through the solar system , reaching Earth's magnetosphere and triggering auroras at high latitudes. Furthermore, the heart was positioned on the side of the Sun oriented toward our planet, taking into account that this spot is slowly rotating, and is therefore moving away from Earth.

But does this heart pose a threat? The US space agency indicates that it is a gradual increase in the strength of the solar wind , therefore, this means that "the Sun has passed the peak of its eleven-year solar activity, so, over the next five years, the number of sunspots and the intensity of solar storms hitting Earth will decrease."

Why is it so important to study the Sun's corona?

The corona is about a thousand times hotter than the Sun's surface, with temperatures exceeding millions of degrees and currents extending into space. Furthermore, the corona is highly dynamic and changes with the sunspot cycle, so understanding it is important, as it is the only part of the Sun that, in a very real sense, physically touches Earth .