Astronomers may be searching for stars in distant galaxies, but they don't forget our nearest star, the sun. There are many instruments that constantly monitor the sun, since we still have a lot to learn.
A few months ago, NASA launched a mission with the space telescope, High Resolution Coronal Imager or Hi-C, which had only one job to do, take better images of the sun and then send them back to Earth.
The images taken by the telescope are of the highest quality ever taken and have proven very useful to scientists. The images reveal the solar braid for the first time.
Solar braiding is the transfer of energy from the sun's magnetic field to its outer rings, explaining how the solar atmosphere can be 50 to 100 times hotter than the sun's surface. The phenomenon had been predicted but never observed.
