Chinese telescope snaps sun鈥檚 corona
Print Edition
Chinese scientists have captured images of the sun鈥檚 hot, thin and outermost layer, called the corona, with a self-developed telescopic instrument.
Designed to block light from the main solar surface in order to observe the corona, the coronagraph, with a caliber of 50 millimeters, is positioned on a 4,800-meter-high mountain in Daocheng County of Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in southwest China鈥檚 Sichuan Province.
鈥淏efore the invention of the coronagraph, scientists could observe the sun鈥檚 upper atmosphere only through the annual total solar eclipse, when the moon鈥檚 shadow covers the bright central layers of the sun and allows its dimmer corona to appear,鈥 said Lin Jun, head of the coronagraph project with the Yunan Observatories under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
A coronagraph mimics this natural phenomenon with a circular mask that sits inside a telescope to block the sun鈥檚 light.
After years of site selection and construction, scientists using the self-developed coronagraph got a clear look at the solar corona on February 27.
The research team released one of the solar eclipse-like images captured by the Chinese light-blocking instrument on social media this month. 鈥淚t shows that China has mastered the key technologies of designing and manufacturing coronagraphs,鈥 Lin said.
鈥淭he instrument is a good start ... for the future development of a larger coronagraph,鈥 said CAS academic Fang Cheng.
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