TRANSITION REGION AND CORONAL EXPLORER
MOST RECENT CORONAL IMAGE

This image is a picture of the Sun taken by the 284A channel of the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer spacecraft. This particular image is a mosaic made up of many individual images of the lower corona. Each image is produced by the emission of energetic UV light by iron particles in the solar atmosphere. Iron only emits this sort of light if it is very hot. In the case shown here we are looking at gas with a temperature of around 2 million degrees.

Bright regions on the main body of the Sun are called active regions. When these active regions reach the edges of the solar disk (the solar limbs) the display a number of interesting features called coronal loops. The small bright regions which are strewn across the disk of the Sun are called bright points while the large dark regions are called coronal holes.