Sun's sizzling X-rays photographed from space

The picture was taken by Nasa's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array which is designed to look at other stars but scientists decided to take a look at our own star to try to answer a mystery.

Because of its very high sensitivity, Nustar could solve some long-standing puzzles, such as whether "nanoflares" exist.
These proposed smaller versions of the Sun's giant flares could help explain why its outer atmosphere is many times hotter than its surface - a decades-old question.

Physicists first thought of using Nustar to study the Sun when it was already under construction.
"At first I thought the whole idea was crazy," said the mission's principal investigator Prof Fiona Harrison, from the California Institute of Technology.
"Why would we have the most sensitive high energy X-ray telescope ever built, designed to peer deep into the universe, look at something in our own back yard?"

But she was eventually convinced by Prof David Smith, a solar physicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
"Nustar will give us a unique look at the Sun, from the deepest to the highest parts of its atmosphere," said Prof Smith, a solar physicist at University of California, Santa Cruz.
www.bbc.co.uk...

Do nanoflares exist ? , I don't know but it is a cool picture.

Nanoflare  impulsive bursts of heating, none of which can be individually detected

I didn't even know that this existed.. But you could say that these bursts are like the engine of the sun running?

Great picture. .

The business end of the device. Its a complex "array" of closely packed gold plated surfaces that deflect individual X-rays, focusing them onto a collector.

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a reply to: gortex
All well an good.
But whom shall we inform if THE SUN has a tumour?

Wow!! That is so pretty! I hope they learn a lot from this, if not so much get some fantastic pictures.

Hi, sun fans.

The X-rays being more "transparent" than light ( I think ),
we see that we can "see deeper" IN the sun, here. B-)

Blue skies.