The Sun
This artifact is a false-color visualization of the Sun captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Unlike a standard photograph which shows a blinding white disk, this image uses a 171 Ångström extreme ultraviolet filter to block out the bright surface. This 'selective blindness' reveals the Corona—the Sun's super-heated upper atmosphere (~1 million Kelvin). The golden loops seen here are not solid structures, but glowing plasma tracing the immense, twisting magnetic field lines that drive the solar engine.
The Sun
4.6 Ga — Solar System Center (1 AU from Earth)
A view of the Sun that blinds the camera to visible light, revealing the invisible magnetic skeleton that holds our star together.
Selective Blindness
o see the truth of the Sun, we have to stop looking at its light. Look with human eyes and you see the Photosphere: a blindingly bright surface at about 6,000 Kelvin. It washes out everything else.
This artifact works by blinding the sensor to that visible glare. The SDO Atmospheric Imaging Assembly uses mirrors coated to reflect only extreme ultraviolet light at exactly 171 Ångströms — invisible to the human eye. By ignoring the surface, the instrument reveals the corona: the Sun's superheated outer atmosphere, a place of violent loops and arches usually invisible to us.
The Iron Eye
The 171 Ångström wavelength corresponds to iron atoms that have lost 8 of their electrons (Fe IX), glowing at about 1 million Kelvin. This is not the Sun's surface but its corona — the superheated outer atmosphere extending millions of kilometres into space. The loops and arches we see are plasma trapped along magnetic field lines, like iron filings around a bar magnet, but at temperatures hotter than the surface that birthed them.
The Fusion Engine
Every second, 600 million tonnes of hydrogen vanish. In their place: helium, neutrinos, and the light that keeps everything alive. The magnetic fields visible in this image are generated by the churning motion of plasma in the Sun's interior, twisted and amplified by the star's rotation. The corona is where that energy is released — the beautiful loops tracing the invisible skeleton of our nearest star. The colours in this image are artificial. The Sun does not look like this. We built a machine that could see what we cannot, and this is what it found.
