15 June 2020 spacecraft Solar Orbiter close to the Sun at a record close distance from 77 million km, which is half way from the earth to the stars. It flies further, the main mission will start only in 2022, but the device has already begun to collect and transmit information. And the first pictures made a stir in the scientific community – the Sun’s surface was littered with flashes of light of unknown nature.
As noted by the researcher Themselves Solanski of the group’s Solar Probe at the max Planck Institute, they are running out of vocabulary to assign designations to all the new objects or phenomena connected with the Sun. Discovered flash was decided to be called “fires” (eng. Campfires). They break out often and clearly, but are very tiny in the scale of the Sun. The size of one “fire” about the size of Europe, so it was impossible to see from Earth.
The working version is: “bonfires” are the miniature version of the large solar flares that we see from Earth. Apparently, the nature of the solar corona is such that it is constantly in excitement, creates bursts of energy that keep her temperature a million degrees. This may explain the paradox of why the inner layers of the Sun is much colder than the surface.
The answers will probably have to look into the future materials for Solar Orbiter. The machine must make a series of gravitational maneuvers, and eventually go into orbit, which will be able to observe the polar regions of the Sun for the first time in history! He also tries to find the sources of the solar wind and many other phenomena.
Source — Business Insider