NASA releases striking picture of smiling sun: The giant fire ball is smiling back at us
The Solar Dynamics Observatory of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has captured a set of pictures that show a smiling sun.
In the images from NASA, the sun can be seen with two eyes, a nose and a mouth. Other striking features such as cheekbones and male-patterned baldness are also quite clearly indicated in the pictures. It seems that the giant ball of fire is beaming its smile out into the universe.
Scientist Karl Battams was the first one to notice the smiling face of the sun. He released one of the pictures on his Twitter page. He even gave a tip on how to easily spot the smiling face of sun.
Tilt your head to the left and smile back at the Sun! #SolarPareidolia pic.twitter.com/p5UNnnq4sx
— Karl Battams (@SungrazerComets) December 2, 2016
While talking to Mashable, he explained as to what makes up these features. He said that the two bright features that look like eyes of the sun are the “active regions” of the star that often generate solar flare causing-sunspots.
The smile of the sun is actually a solar filament, which is a long string of plasma found in its atmosphere. Other dark regions that make up the hair and nose of the sun are coronal holes, which generate solar wind.
All these features of the sun are transient. The plasma and magnetic field keeps moving around, hence, reconnecting and forming different patterns.
This is not the first time that NASA has captured the sun with a face. In 2014, NASA captured the face of the sun but without a smile. Named Jack-o-Lantern, the image showed a creepy looking face of the sun.
According to the scientists, the sun was the first object that was formed out of the cloud of dust and gas in the solar system. It is said that the star sucked 99 percent of the matter from the disk of debris that surrounded it. The rest of the material was used in the formation of other planets.
