Abstract
Determining the real scale of structures in the Sun's corona has proved difficult because of limited spatial resolution. Now high-resolution imaging has allowed dynamic structures on scales of 150 kilometres to be observed. See Letter p.501 The Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, is millions of degrees hotter than its surface. The search for mechanisms capable of transferring energy from the Sun's interior to the periphery on such a scale has identified two strong candidates: wave heating is thought to heat the corona to 1.5 million K, and the reconnection and unravelling of magnetic braids has been proposed as the means of boosting the temperature towards 4 million K. New evidence to support that latter mechanism is provided by a five-minute series of images obtained by a high-resolution camera on-board a sounding rocket. The images reveal fine-scale braiding to a resolution of about 150 km in a coronal active region, and the images are consistent with energy production sufficient for the observed heating.
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