Key Points
For centuries, scientists have tracked the dark spots dappling its radiant face, while in recent decades, telescopes in space and on Earth have scrutinized sunbeams in wavelengths spanning the electromagnetic spectrum..
Experiments have also sniffed the suns atmosphere, captured puffs of the solar wind, collected solar neutrinos and high-energy particles, and mapped our stars magnetic fieldor tried to, since we have yet to really observe the polar regions that are key to learning about the suns inner magnetic structure...
As it loops around the sun, dipping in and out of the solar corona, it has collected data that shows us how small-scale magnetic activity within the solar atmosphere makes the solar corona almost inconceivably hot...
At the suns surface, magnetic fields accumulate at the boundaries of churning convective cells, known as supergranules, which look like bubbles in a pan of boiling oil on the stove..
The suns searing corona is the source of a supersonic solar windstreams of charged particles that form a massive protective bubble around the solar system called the heliosphere, which extends far beyond the known planets..
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