NASA captures image of 'smiling' sun

A satellite of US space agency NASA was able to capture an image of the sun where it appears to be smiling with a pair of eyes and a turned-up mouth.

The agency tweeted the image, captured last week, with the caption, “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”.

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The Solar Dynamics Observatory, a department of NASA, is an agency that aims to investigate how solar activity creates and drives space weather. Launched on February 11, 2010, the observatory uses its spacecraft to measure the sun’s interior, atmosphere, magnetic field, and energy output.

Ever since the image was released on the internet, many users have compared the image of the smiling sun to a carved-up Halloween pumpkin, a lion, Stay Puf[t] marshmallow man from Ghostbusters, and the popular sun character from the children's show, Teletubbies.

Experts have, however, shown concern over the sun's coronal holes being a sign of a solar storm hitting Earth, reported The Guardian. Spaceweather.com also commented on the image with a warning, “The cheerful... is spewing a triple stream of solar wind toward Earth.”

Solar storms are a variety of eruptions of mass and energy from the solar surface, deforming the Earth's magnetic field.