NASA’s new solar telescope, CODEX, has captured its first images of the sun’s outer atmosphere, revealing subtle changes that could help scientists better predict space weather events. The mini solar telescope is attached to the International Space Station (ISS) and uses a coronagraph to block out the sun’s light, allowing it to focus on the corona in unprecedented detail.
The first photos from CODEX show temperature fluctuations in the outer corona, captured over several days, and giant “coronal streamers” shooting out of the sun. The telescope measures the sun using four narrow-band filters, two for temperature and two for speed, allowing scientists to understand how the solar wind interacts with the sun’s atmosphere.
The main goal of CODEX is to discover how the superhot particles streaming out of the sun interact with its outer atmosphere. The telescope aims to measure the temperature and speed of material in the slowly varying solar wind flowing out from the Sun, which is heated to 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit (1 million degrees Celsius).
By analyzing these changes, scientists hope to predict dangerous space weather events, particularly those triggered by coronal holes that spew fast solar particles toward Earth. The recent experience of two significant geomagnetic storms in the last few weeks highlights the importance of understanding the solar wind.
The CODEX instrument has likely switched on at the optimal time, allowing it to make new discoveries that have never been seen before. Scientists are excited about what’s to come and believe that this technology will help them better understand the sun’s behavior.
Source: https://www.livescience.com/space/the-sun/never-been-seen-before-first-images-from-new-iss-solar-telescope-reveal-subtle-fluctuations-in-suns-outer-atmosphere