Orion EFT-1 Flight in Detail

via universetoday.com

For many of us, it’s easier to comprehend complex processes when they are expressed visually. That was the impetus for artist Gary Schroeder in creating this wonderful hand-sketched infographic for NASA’s Exploration Flight Test 1 (EFT-1) for the Orion spacecraft.

Croissants, triangles, birds: some of the weirdest coronal holes seen on the Sun

A dark croissant-shaped hole opened up in the sun's atmosphere, and spewed a stream of solar wind into space. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory took this picture of the vast opening during the early hours of January 30, 2011. Coronal holes are regions where the sun's corona is dark. These features were discovered when X-ray telescopes were first flown above the Earth's atmosphere to reveal the structure of the corona across the solar disc. Coronal holes are associated with 'open' magnetic field lines and are often found at the sun’s poles. The high-speed solar wind is known to originate in coronal holes.

Credit: NASA/SDO/AIA