Teamwork

Further insight into the campfires has also been enabled by pairing up with NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which is in orbit around the Earth, to triangulate the height of the campfires in the solar atmosphere.

“To our surprise, campfires are located very low in the solar atmosphere, only a few thousand kilometres above the solar surface, the photosphere,” says David Berghmans, Principal Investigator of EUI. “It is very early days, and we are still learning a lot about the campfire characteristics. For example, even though campfires look like small coronal loops, their length is on average a bit short for their height, suggesting we only see part of these little loops. But our preliminary analysis also shows that campfires do not really change their height during their lifetime, setting them aside from jet-like features.”

Understanding the characteristics of the campfires and their place amongst other known solar phenomena will enable scientists to dive deeper into the solar corona heating problem.