Clearest ever images of Sun’s corona reveal ‘raindrops’ of dancing plasma

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By Phie Jacobs, Science. 

Excerpt: Researchers...aren’t quite sure why...the corona, is so much hotter than the Sun’s surface—or why it can violently eject huge volumes of plasma that can mess with Earth’s magnetic field and scramble power grids. ...air turbulence in Earth’s atmosphere blurs our view of it, making it hard to discern fine details. Now, using an adaptive optics system installed at Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO), the authors of a new Nature Astronomy study have removed this blur—producing the clearest images and videos to date of the Sun’s atmosphere. In a statement, BBSO optical engineer and study co-author Nicolas Gorceix likened the new technology to “a pumped-up autofocus and optical image stabilization in your smartphone camera, but correcting for the errors in the atmosphere rather than the user’s shaky hands.” ...researchers also captured a phenomenon known as coronal rain, where city-size droplets of hot plasma in the Sun’s corona cool down, condense, and fall back to the Sun’s surface, pulled down by gravity. But whereas raindrops on Earth fall straight down, this electrically charged plasma follows the Sun’s magnetic field lines to form enormous, arching threads.... 

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