Rocket Telescope Gets Closest Look at the Sun

	Imagery shows an active area of the chromosphere.

Scientists got their closest-ever ultraviolet look at the Sun from space, thanks to a telescope and camera launched aboard a sounding rocket. The images revealed an unexpectedly high level of activity in a lower layer of the Sun's atmosphere (chromosphere). The pictures will help researchers answer one of their most burning questions about how the Sun works: how its outer atmosphere (corona) heats up to over one million degrees Celsius (1.8 million Fahrenheit), 100 times hotter than the chromosphere.

A team of Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) scientists used the Very high Angular resolution ULtraviolet Telescope (VAULT) to take pictures of ultraviolet (UV) light (1216 Å) emitted from the upper chromosphere. Resolving areas as small as 240 kilometers (150 miles or 0.3 arcseconds) on each side, the June 14, 2002, flight captured images about three times better than the previous-best pictures from space.

The mission was conducted through NASA's Sounding Rocket Program.

For the complete article on images of the Sun's ultraviolet light, go to: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/
topstory/2003/0708vault.html

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