NASA telescope spots ‘sad face’ in the sun

Everyone has heard about the man in the moon, but it seems the sun is unhappy about missing out on the fun with a NASA telescope spotting what appears to be a frown.

The dark line was spotted on the lower half of the sun in an image taken from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) on February 10.

The SDO shows colder material as dark and hotter material as light, so the dark strip, which stretches more than 850,000km is actually a giant mass of colder material in the sun’s atmosphere.

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A NASA statement said lines like this, known as solar filaments, usually float around for a few days before disappearing, either erupting out into space as a coronal mass ejection or raining back down.

The SDO was launched in 2011 aboard the ULA Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral and is designed to study the causes of solar variability and its impacts on Earth.

“The spacecraft's long-term measurements give solar scientists in-depth information to help characterise the interior of the sun, the sun's magnetic field, the hot plasma of the solar corona, and the density of radiation that creates the ionosphere of the planets,” the NASA statement reads.

“The information is used to create better forecasts of space weather needed to protect aircraft, satellites and astronauts living and working in space.”

So even though the sun might be looking a bit sad in the picture, it is nothing to worry about.

Morning news break – February 12