By Ron Cowen
Why is the sun’s outer atmosphere so much hotter than the star’s roiling interior? Astronomers hope that the recently launched Hinode spacecraft, which has begun staring at the sun with a trio of telescopes, will help solve that puzzle.
Images taken during the testing phase of the Hinode mission, a Japanese-British–U.S. collaboration, have examined the solar surface as well as the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona. Focusing on the sun’s surface, the craft’s half-meter-wide visible-light telescope is the largest solar telescope ever flown in space.