Russian scientists say sun "smiles at us"

There is a smiley face the size of the whole Sun, say scientists at the Lebedev Institute of Physics in Moscow. But you will need special instruments to see it.

“A smiley approximately 600,000 kilometers long and a pair of eyes 200,000 kilometers in diameter are formed by the magnetic fields of the Sun. Black areas are fields with negative polarity and the whites are those with positive polarity. The Sun’s ‘irises’ are four times bigger then the Earth – you can really drown in those eyes,” a report from the institute’s Laboratory of X-Ray Astronomy of the Sun says.

“Judging by the facial expression and the way its eyes are wide open, the temper of the star we live next to is calm and a little careless,” scientists explain.

The Sun’s smiley is far from being the first discovered by astronomers. Probably the most famous is the Galle crater on Mars, which has a semi-circular mountain range and two smaller craters forming a happy face.


/RT.com/