"Say cheese! Today, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory caught the Sun "smiling." Seen in ultraviolet light, these dark patches on the Sun are known as coronal holes and are regions where fast solar wind gushes out into space," NASA Sun tweeted.
Since being posted, the picture garnered over 14k likes, more than 3,500 retweets, and numerous reactions.
“Obviously the sun is gonna be smiling after the eclipse!" one user jokingly said.
“Pretty cool but at the same time, horrifying," another user said, while the third wrote, “That looks so cool! It kinda does look like the sun is smiling."
“I see two versions of the smiley, the large coronal hole is a nose and there is a curve to the swirls under it that is a mouth, or the large coronal hole is a cutesy mouth itself," one more user commented.
According to space experts, the picture of the Sun is not as happy as it looks. The dark patches which are seen in ultraviolet light are actually coronal holes, which are the regions from where fast solar wind gushes out into space.
These coronal holes can also cause a solar storm on Earth as they release a complex stream of solar winds. The face-like pattern is a result of the coincidental positioning of these coronal holes, which are basically open magnetic field regions in the Sun's atmosphere that are cooler and denser than the surrounding plasma.
Spaceweather.com, a website that keeps track of all the solar activities informs that due to this ‘smiling face’ of the Sun, an intense solar storm is expected to hit Earth on 28 and 28 October.
A partial Solar eclipse or ‘Surya Grahan’ was witnessed across most of the Indian states on Tuesday as the Sun, Moon and Earth align together in a non-linear fashion.
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