Discovering the Sun's Mysteriously Hot Atmosphere

Something mysterious is going on at the Sun. In defiance of all logic, its atmosphere gets much, much hotter the farther it stretches from the Sun’s blazing surface.
Temperatures in the corona — the Sun’s outer atmosphere — spike to 3 million degrees Fahrenheit, while just 1,000 miles below, the underlying surface simmers at a balmy 10,000 F. How the Sun manages this feat is a mystery that dates back nearly 150 years, and remains one of the greatest unanswered questions in astrophysics. Scientists call it the coronal heating problem. Watch the video to learn how astronomers first discovered evidence for this mystery during an eclipse in the 1800s, and what scientists today think could explain it.
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Music credits: “Developing Over Time” by Ben Niblett [PRS], Jon Cotton [PRS], “Eternal Circle” by Laurent Dury [SACEM], “Starlight Andromeda” by Ben Niblett [PRS], Jon Cotton [PRS]
Coronal spectrum image credit: Constantine Emmanouilidi
Video credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Joy Ng (USRA): Producer
Kathalina Tran (Wyle Information Systems): Writer
Eric Christian Ph.D. (NASA/HQ): Scientist
Nour Raouafi (Johns Hopkins University/APL): Scientist
James A. Klimchuk (NASA): Scientist
Ryan Milligan (University of Glasgow): Scientist
Sten Odenwald (NASA/GSFC): Scientist
Adrian Daw (NASA/GSFC): Scientist
Tom Bridgman (GST): Data Visualizer
Joy Ng (USRA): Animator
Walt Feimer (KBRwyle): Animator
Michael Lentz (USRA): Animator
Kathalina Tran (Wyle Information Systems): Animator
This video is public domain and along with other supporting visualizations can be downloaded from the Scientific Visualization Studio at:
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