An image of the solar corona in 211 Angstrom extreme ultraviolet light from the AIA instrument on SDO. The white lines represent the magnetic field on the solar surface. The field lines are created with a model of magnetic filed called the Potential Field Source Surface (PFSS) model.
The illustration maps the magnetic field lines emanating from the Sun and their interactions superimposed on an extreme ultraviolet image from SDO (Oct. 20, 2010). As one can see, the field lines are most dense around active regions, but they also link to other magnetically active areas across the Sun. These magnetic field maps are a recently added feature to the SDO site. Images for every wavelength each day can be found under “view latest images” link on the home page under The Sun Now image. These images are labeled PFSS (stands for Potential Field Source Surface) and are available in different sizes. The movie shows the magnetic map overlaid on three extreme ultraviolet images and one magnetogram image (showing magnetically active areas as black or white). (SDO Pick of the Week for October 22, 2010; credit: SDO and Steele Hill)
