"On October 8, 2014 active regions on the sun gave it the appearance of a jack-o'-lantern. This image is a blend of 171 and 193 ångström light as captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory." --NASA
NASA/GSFC/SDO
An image of the sun was released over the weekend by NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio and in it, the sun looks more like a ghoulish jack o’lantern than it does a star, reported The Washington Post on Oct. 13. The image was captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory on Oct. 8.
NASA
The ghoulish photograph is the result of a combination of images which are composed of “two different wavelengths of light (171 and 193 angstroms) that are typically colored gold and yellow.” NASA has posted more images of the sun in other wavelengths as well, including a ghostly blue colored image that was captured “in 335 ångström extreme ultraviolet light.” You can view those images here.
NASA regularly captures images of the sun in different wavelengths as doing so “helps highlight different aspects of the sun’s surface and atmosphere.” NASA explained that when any of us take photographs of the sun with a regular camera, what’s captured in the frame is a “yellowish featureless disk” or maybe even a reddish virtually featureless disc if the capture happens to occur near sunrise or sunset. The reason for this is that the Earth’s atmosphere filters out blue wavelengths of light from our camera lenses. Other colors are filtered out, as well.
The sun, in fact, emits light in all colors, but since yellow is the brightest wavelength from the sun, that is the color we see with our naked eye -- which the camera represents, since one should never look directly at the sun. When all the visible colors are summed together, scientists call this “white light.”
NASA uses a combination of specialized instruments which can be found in “ground-based” or “space-based telescopes” in order to capture the images of the sun. The instruments can detect and observe wavelengths of light that are not visible to the naked eye. These different wavelengths relate information about what is happening on the sun’s surface and in it’s atmosphere. In the case of the jack o’lantern sun, NASA wrote that the brighter areas in the image show “active regions” that “emit more light and energy” than others, showing an “intense and complex set of magnetic fields hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona.”
The effect is impressive and the image comes just in time for Halloween. The image shows the jack o’lantern sun grinning for the photograph with its fiery eyes and nose and mouth.
*originally published on the now defunct Examiner.com
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