First solar images from NOAA’s GOES-16 weather satellite are here!

GOES-16 captured this view of the moon as it looked above the surface of the Earth on January 15. (Image courtesy: NOAA/NASA)

New Delhi: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) first of the next generation of geosynchronous environmental satellite – GOES-16 weather satellite – has just successfully delivered its first solar images.

The images were captured by the Solar Ultraviolet Imager or SUVI instrument aboard the weather satellite on January 29, 2017 and show a large coronal hole. Check out the pic below:

These images of the sun were captured at the same time on January 29, 2017 by the six channels on the SUVI instrument on board GOES-16 and show a large coronal hole in the sun’s southern hemisphere. Each channel observes the sun at a different wavelength, allowing scientists to detect a wide range of solar phenomena important for space weather forecasting. (Image courtesy: NOAA/NASA)

As the sun's 11-year activity cycle approaches solar minimum, the powerful solar flares become scarce and coronal holes become the primary space weather phenomena – this one in particular initiated aurora throughout the polar regions.

Coronal holes are areas where the sun's corona appears darker because the plasma has high-speed streams open to interplanetary space, resulting in a cooler and lower-density area as compared to its surroundings.

According to NASA, the sun’s upper atmosphere, or solar corona, consists of extremely hot plasma, an ionized gas. This plasma interacts with the sun’s powerful magnetic field, generating bright loops of material that can be heated to millions of degrees. Outside hot coronal loops, there are cool, dark regions called filaments, which can erupt and become a key source of space weather when the sun is active. Other dark regions are called coronal holes, which occur where the sun’s magnetic field allows plasma to stream away from the sun at high speed. The effects linked to coronal holes are generally milder than those of coronal mass ejections, but when the outflow of solar particles is intense – can pose risks to satellites in Earth orbit.

The solar corona is so hot that it is best observed with X-ray and extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) cameras. Various elements emit light at specific EUV and X-ray wavelengths depending on their temperature, so by observing in several different wavelengths, a picture of the complete temperature structure of the corona can be made. The GOES-16 SUVI observes the sun in six EUV channels.

GOES 16, previously known as GOES-R, was launched at approximately 23:42 UTC on November 19, 2016 from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, US.

The American space agency also shared a video of the coronal hole in the sun’s southern hemisphere from the Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) on board NOAA's new GOES-16 satellite. Have a look!