Photo Agency - Astronomy - Space - Nature

> The Sun's corona seen by Skylab

The Sun's corona seen by Skylab

author: Nasa/Novapix

reference: a-sol02-00005

Image Size 300 DPI: 25 * 18 cm

The Sun's corona stretches far beyond the dense, inner corona seen in x-rays and ultraviolet light, and beyond the limits of what we normally see in the dark sky of a total solar eclipse. We see the outer corona briefly at total eclipses of the Sun, where it appears white and delicate against the starry background of a temporarily darkened, daytime sky. Even then, Earth's intervening atmosphere is bright enough to limit our view of the outer corona. At Skylab's orbital altitude, where almost no air was left and where the sky was starkly black, the outer corona was at last clearly seen. Skylab's coronagraph observations coupled with x-ray pictures of the inner corona helped establish the origin of the corona's varied forms and the important connection between coronal holes and high-speed streams in the solar wind.

Keywords for this photo:

1973 - ASTRONOMY - CORONA - CORONOGRAPH - GLOBAL VIEW - SKYLAB - SOLAR CORONA - STAR - SUN - ULTRAVIOLET - UV - X - X-RAY -