The “smiling sun” photo was originally captured on October 26, 2022, by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The photo has resurfaced on social media because of the Sun’s distinctly cheerful appearance. Our tendency to interpret these patterns as eyes and a mouth is known as pareidolia. This means the human brain readily recognizes familiar faces in random patterns.
Science Behind the Smile
The three dark patches making up the eyes and the mouth are known as coronal holes. These are regions located in the sun’s outer atmosphere where magnetic field lines extend outward into space. This allows streams of solar wind to escape more readily. Since these regions are less dense and cooler than the surrounding plasma, they appear dark when observed in extreme ultraviolet light.
The smile was captured by an instrument aboard Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which is used to track the sun’s activity. SDO continuously observes the Sun. Its Atmospheric Imaging Assembly captures images in 10 wavelength bands to reveal features at different heights and temperatures of the sun’s atmosphere.
