NASA shared a stunning photo of the “smiling” Sun

Coronal holes in the upper layer of the sun’s atmosphere have formed a really interesting shape.

It’s safe to say that the Sun was in a pretty good mood this week, or at least it seems that way according to images released by the US space agency NASA.

NASA shared the interesting photo with the world through its Twitter account in charge of monitoring the Sun, and as announced in the tweet, this “smiling” face is the result of observing the Sun in ultraviolet light and coronal holes, i.e. regions with a lower density of plasma in the upper layers of the sun’s atmosphere, from which solar winds exit into space.

However, although these formed shapes seem interesting to us, coronal holes are not harmless at all. As SpaceWeather reports, the Sun through them throws three times more jets of solar wind directly toward Earth, which could cause an aurora borealis visible from the higher latitudes of our planet as early as Saturday.

The photo was taken by the Earth-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite, whose sensors are aimed at the Sun to make various measurements of our star and its solar activity. One of the mission’s goals is to see how the Sun’s magnetic field is generated and structured and how it affects life on Earth and our telecommunications systems.