PIA11177: Returning Coronal Hole
Between Jan. 30-Feb. 2, 2017, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory saw a substantial coronal hole rotating across the face of the sun this past week and is again streaming solar wind towards Earth.
 Target Name:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  SDO 
 Instrument:  Atmosphere Imaging Assembly 
 Product Size:  1500 x 1500 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  SDO 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA11177.tif (3.801 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA11177.jpg (138.7 kB)  

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Original Caption Released with Image:

A substantial coronal hole rotated across the face of the sun this past week and is again streaming solar wind towards Earth (Jan. 30 - Feb. 2, 2017). This same coronal hole was facing Earth about a month ago and has rotated into a similar position again (see our Gallery entry for this here: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/main/item/769. Coronal holes are areas of open magnetic field from which solar wind particles stream into space. In this wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light it appears as a dark area near the center and lower portion of the sun.

Movies
PIA11177_Coronal_hole_193_Feb_big.mp4
PIA11177_Coronal_hole_193_Feb_sm.mp4

SDO is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Its Atmosphere Imaging Assembly was built by the Lockheed Martin Solar Astrophysics Laboratory (LMSAL), Palo Alto, California.

Image Credit:
NASA/GSFC/Solar Dynamics Observatory

Image Addition Date:
2017-02-06