WriteUp | Notes

NASA’s Quest to Touch the Sun The outer layers of the sun’s atmosphere are a blistering million degrees hotter than its surface. NASA sent a probe to find out why—by getting closer to the star than ever before. Taken from Wallper Den. THE ORIGINAL VERSION   of   this story   appeared in   Quanta Magazine . Our  sun  is the best-observed star in the entire universe. We see its light every day. For centuries, scientists have tracked the dark spots dappling its radiant face, while in recent decades, telescopes in space and on Earth have scrutinized sunbeams in wavelengths spanning the electromagnetic spectrum. Experiments have also sniffed the sun’s atmosphere, captured puffs of the  solar wind , collected solar neutrinos and high-energy particles, and mapped our star’s magnetic field—or tried to, since we have yet to really observe the polar regions that are key to learning about the sun’s inner magnetic structure. For all that scrutiny, however,  one crucial question  remained embarrass