Solar wind sherpas capture coronal hole, smoke rings during eclipse
During the total solar eclipse on August 12, 2026, scientists from the Solar Wind Sherpas project captured rare images of the Sun's outer atmosphere.
They found a huge coronal hole and some rare "smoke rings" swirling through the solar wind, offering a fresh look at how the Sun's magnetic field shapes space weather.
Photos from Spain reveal plasma vortices
The team took these sharp photos from a mountain in Spain, where the eclipse made it possible to see details usually hidden by sunlight.
The "smoke rings," which actually form because of temperature differences in coronal plasma, twist and travel along magnetic lines into space.
As Miloslav Druckmuller, a professor of mathematics at the Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic, who leads the image processing efforts for the Solar Wind Sherpas Team, put it: they're "beautifully twisted vortices" that reveal just how dynamic our Sun really is.