Giant Crude Face Appears on Sun

If you look just right, the Sun appears to be opening its mouth and laughing at us. (We can't imagine why.)

As ScienceAlert reports, this colossal gash forming the mouth is what's known as "coronal hole," which occurs when the star's magnetic field opens up and allows a gust of charged solar wind to rush out, leaving the area it just left much cooler and giving it that gaping look. As for the eyes, those are smaller sunspots to the hole's north, giving this solar face a look of surprise.

When looking at the Sun from Earth — which we recommend only doing with special glasses or instruments, by the way — you won't notice its wide grin unless viewing it on the ultraviolet (UV) spectrum. From that wavelength, a different picture emerges: one with a wide, open mouth that laughs at our little lives back on terra firma.

SO COOL! We just observed the creation of a coronal hole, which have been populating our Sun like crazy recently! Here how it happened in this #spaceweather deep dive Read More