PIA22414: Three Coronal Holes
For much of this week the sun featured three substantial coronal holes observed by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory April 3-6, 2018. These are areas of open magnetic field from which high speed solar wind rushes out into space.
 Target Name:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  SDO 
 Instrument:  Atmosphere Imaging Assembly 
 Product Size:  1650 x 1650 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  SDO 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA22414.tif (4.104 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA22414.jpg (179.7 kB)  

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Original Caption Released with Image:

For much of this week the sun featured three substantial coronal holes (Apr. 3-6, 2018). Coronal holes appear as large dark areas which are identified with arrows in the still image. These are areas of open magnetic field from which high speed solar wind rushes out into space. This wind, if it interacts with Earth's magnetosphere, can cause aurora to appear near the poles. They are not at all uncommon.

Movies
PIA22414_3_coronal_holes_big.mp4
PIA22414_3_coronal_holes_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:
2018-04-16