On Halloween, NASA shares 'solar jack-o-lantern' with ghoulish grin

For Halloween, a festival that has people in many countries putting on spooky costumes, NASA shared 'spooky images' of the sun. NASA's Instagram handle on October 31, the day of Halloween, shared a picture taken by its Solar Dynamics Observatory that made the sun look like a jack-o-lantern.

A jack-o'-lantern is a carved lantern, most commonly made from a pumpkin for Halloween nights.

NASA in its post said the picture was taken on October 2014 and the sun got its 'ghoulish grin' from its active regions which emit more light and energy than the surrounding dark areas.


The active regions are markers of an intense and complex set of magnetic fields hovering in the sun’s atmosphere

"You're gourdous. Literally GOURD. Ous," the US space agency said in a nice play of words.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by NASA (@nasa)

"Bright orange active spots make the shape of two eyes and a grin, making the Sun look like a jack-o'-lantern. The rest of the Sun is dark in comparison, with an orange outline distinguishing the star from the darkness of space," NASA said in its image description.

The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) records phenomena like solar flares and coronal loops. It measures the sun’s interior, atmosphere, magnetic field, and energy output.

A few days earlier, NASA shared a picture taken by the SDO in which our star looked like a giant pumpkin with a jolly smile.

The picture on Twitter, in keeping with the festive spirit of Halloween, looked like the sun smiling because of the black patches seen on the otherwise bright face.

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

"Say cheese." said the NASA twitter post that day. Some had then called the image a jack-o'-lantern in reverse.