How We See the Beautiful, Violent Sun

A solar flare captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory in October 2014.

美国宇航局太阳动力学观测站于 2014 年 10 月捕捉到的太阳耀斑。

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

美国宇航局戈达德太空飞行中心

T he sun is one of the most studied objects in the history of science.

太阳是科学史上研究最多的物体之一。

The ancient Babylonians and Chinese tracked sunspots and solar eclipses, etching their observations into clay tablets; these records would outlast their civilizations.

古代巴比伦人和中国人追踪太阳黑子和日食，将他们的观察结果刻在泥板上；这些记录将比他们的文明更长久。

When the telescope arrived in the early 1600s, astronomers such as Galileo Galilei, Christoph Scheiner, and Johannes Fabricius turned these instruments toward this nearest star, projected the image onto paper, and saw dark blemishes drifting slowly across the solar surface.

当望远镜在 1600 年代初到达时，伽利略·伽利莱、克里斯托夫·沙伊纳和约翰内斯·法布里修斯等天文学家将这些仪器转向这颗最近的恒星，将图像投影到纸上，并看到黑色斑点在太阳表面缓慢漂移。

In the 1800s, our ability to understand the sun’s composition launched a new era of solar science.

1800 年代，我们了解太阳成分的能力开启了太阳科学的新时代。

Spectroscopy could split light emitted from objects into a kind of barcode that characterized elemental makeup.

光谱学可以将物体发出的光分解成一种表征元素组成的条形码。

Armed with this method, Pierre Janssen and Norman Lockyer independently found lines in the sun’s spectrum that didn’t match any known element on Earth.

利用这种方法，皮埃尔·詹森和诺曼·洛克耶独立地在太阳光谱中发现了与地球上任何已知元素都不匹配的谱线。

Lockyer named it helium, after Helios, the Greek god of the sun.

洛克耶以希腊太阳神赫利俄斯的名字将其命名为氦。

It would be another 27 years before Sir William Ramsay isolated and identified that element on our planet.

又过了 27 年，威廉拉姆齐爵士才在我们的星球上分离并鉴定出了这种元素。

In the early 1900s, the pioneering American astrophysicist George Ellery Hale discovered that the sunspots that Galileo and others had traced weren’t blemishes but magnetic storms, regions of intense activity that waxed and waned on the 11-year solar cycle.

1900 年代初期，美国天体物理学家先驱乔治·埃勒里·黑尔 (George Ellery Hale) 发现，伽利略等人追踪到的太阳黑子并不是瑕疵，而是磁暴，即在 11 年太阳周期中盛衰的强烈活动区域。

The French astronomer Bernard Lyot built a coronagraph in 1930: a telescope with a disc at its center that blocked the sun’s blinding light, mimicking an eclipse on demand.

法国天文学家伯纳德·利奥特 (Bernard Lyot) 于 1930 年制造了一台日冕仪：一台望远镜，其中心有一个圆盘，可以阻挡太阳的眩目光线，按需模拟日食。

For the first time, scientists could study the corona — the sun’s ghostly outer atmosphere — without waiting for the moon to cooperate.

科学家们第一次可以研究日冕——太阳幽灵般的外层大气——而无需等待月球的配合。

From the 1950s on, the space age allowed scientists to create instruments that could escape the observational barriers of Earth.

从 20 世纪 50 年代开始，太空时代让科学家们能够制造出能够摆脱地球观测障碍的仪器。

Satellites and probes began directly measuring the solar wind — the constant stream of charged particles the sun throws off in all directions — along with the violent phenomenon of coronal mass ejections, plasma founts that are some of the most energetic events in our solar neighborhood.

卫星和探测器开始直接测量太阳风——太阳向各个方向发射的持续带电粒子流——以及日冕物质抛射的剧烈现象，等离子体源是我们太阳附近最活跃的事件之一。

Since 1995, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory , a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency, has been on constant surveillance, and NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory joined the fold in 2010.

自 1995 年以来，美国宇航局和欧洲航天局合作建立的太阳和日光层观测站一直在进行持续监视，美国宇航局的太阳动力学观测站于 2010 年也加入了这一行列。

The Parker Solar Probe first flew through the corona itself in 2021 .

帕克太阳探测器于 2021 年首次飞越日冕本身。

Its pass in 2024 was the closest any human-made object has ever come to a star .

它于 2024 年经过，是有史以来最接近恒星的人造物体。

Observations and questions have continued to accumulate.

观察和问题不断积累。

Why is the corona hundreds of times hotter than the surface below it?

为什么日冕比它下面的表面热数百倍？

What drives the solar cycle?

是什么驱动太阳周期？

How do the electromagnetic radiation bursts known as flares decide to erupt?

被称为耀斑的电磁辐射爆发是如何决定爆发的？

The instruments keep improving, and the secrets they uncover continue to fascinate.

仪器不断改进，它们所揭示的秘密也继续令人着迷。

Published in 1613, Galileo’s Letters on Sunspots ( Istoria e dimostrazioni intorno alle macchie solari ) featured his observations of dark spots on the face of the sun, which he thought resembled clouds.

伽利略出版于 1613 年的《太阳黑子书信》（Istoria e dimostrazioni intorno alle macchie Solari）主要描述了他对太阳表面黑斑的观察，他认为这些黑斑类似于云。

Around the same time, the Jesuit mathematician Christoph Scheiner developed a method for safely observing sunspots by projecting the sun’s image through a telescope onto a screen

大约在同一时间，耶稣会数学家克里斯托夫·沙伊纳（Christoph Scheiner）开发了一种通过望远镜将太阳图像投射到屏幕上来安全观察太阳黑子的方法

Houghton Library, Harvard University

哈佛大学霍顿图书馆

Scheiner argued that the sunspots he observed and recorded were satellites of the sun.

沙伊纳认为，他观察和记录的太阳黑子是太阳的卫星。

Galileo disagreed, arguing that sunspots must reside on the sun.

伽利略不同意，认为太阳黑子一定存在于太阳上。

On September 1, 1859, the English astronomer Richard Carrington spotted an unusual and sudden brightening on the solar surface, which he mapped out in this drawing.

1859 年 9 月 1 日，英国天文学家理查德·卡林顿 (Richard Carrington) 发现太阳表面出现了不寻常的突然变亮，他在这幅图中将其绘制出来。

Seventeen hours later, the northern lights were visible as far south as Cuba, and telegraph systems across the Western world failed and even caught fire.

十七小时后，北极光远至古巴都可见，整个西方世界的电报系统出现故障，甚至着火。

The Carrington Event, as it became known, was the first documented case of a geomagnetic storm associated with a solar flare.

众所周知，卡林顿事件是第一个有记录的与太阳耀斑相关的地磁风暴案例。

The American astronomer Samuel Pierpont Langley created this drawing of a sunspot in 1873.

美国天文学家塞缪尔·皮尔庞特·兰利 (Samuel Pierpont Langley) 于 1873 年创作了这幅太阳黑子图。

It has become an iconic image in solar science.

它已成为太阳科学中的标志性图像。

Note the scale as indicated by the inset of the Americas at the upper left.

请注意左上角美洲插图所示的比例。

AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives

AIP Emilio Segrè 视觉档案

In 1919, the English astronomer Sir Frank Dyson organized expeditions to the West African island of Principe and the Brazilian town of Sobral to observe a total solar eclipse.

1919年，英国天文学家弗兰克·戴森爵士组织考察队前往西非普林西比岛和巴西小镇索布拉尔观测日全食。

The results showed that starlight bent around the sun, confirming a key prediction of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

结果表明，星光围绕太阳弯曲，证实了阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦广义相对论的一个关键预测。

Einstein became world famous overnight.

爱因斯坦一夜之间名声大噪。

Another solar eclipse meant another expedition, this time on September 10, 1923.

另一次日食意味着另一次探险，这次是在 1923 年 9 月 10 日。

The Yerkes Observatory sent a team to Santa Catalina Island, California.

耶基斯天文台派出一个团队前往加利福尼亚州圣卡塔利娜岛。

B.W.

B.W.

Harris Yerkes Observatory, University of Chicago

芝加哥大学哈里斯耶克斯天文台

Launched in 1995 and still in operation, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory orbits around a point on the direct line between the sun and the Earth, giving it an uninterrupted view.

太阳和日光层观测站于 1995 年启动，至今仍在运行，它围绕太阳和地球之间的直线上的一点运行，提供不间断的视野。

It revolutionized our ability to forecast space weather and provides detailed views of large solar flares such as this one.

它彻底改变了我们预测太空天气的能力，并提供了像这样的大型太阳耀斑的详细视图。

The Earth-orbiting Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), launched in 2010, provided more high-resolution images of solar activity.

2010 年发射的地球轨道太阳动力学观测站 (SDO) 提供了更多关于太阳活动的高分辨率图像。

This 2014 video shows a solar flare in a blend of two wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light: 304 angstroms (red) and 171 angstroms (yellow).

这段 2014 年的视频展示了由两种波长的极紫外光混合而成的太阳耀斑：304 埃（红色）和 171 埃（黄色）。

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

美国宇航局戈达德太空飞行中心

This time-lapse video captured a partial solar eclipse when the moon passed between SDO and the sun.

当月球经过 SDO 和太阳之间时，这段延时视频捕捉到了日偏食。

(Watch for January 30.)

（敬请关注 1 月 30 日。）

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight-Center/SDO

NASA 戈达德太空飞行中心/SDO

Solar Orbiter, a joint mission of the European Space Agency and NASA that launched in 2020, captured these two images in February 2021 and October 2023.

太阳轨道飞行器是欧洲航天局和美国宇航局于 2020 年发射的联合任务，于 2021 年 2 月和 2023 年 10 月拍摄了这两张图像。

As the sun approached its solar maximum (a year after the second image), observations revealed more explosions, dark sunspots, and swirls of super-hot gas.

当太阳接近太阳活动极大期时（第二张图像一年后），观测结果显示了更多的爆炸、黑色太阳黑子和超热气体漩涡。

ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI-Team

ESA 和 NASA/太阳轨道飞行器/EUI 团队

A very large sunspot group transited the solar disk in October 2014, as captured by the SDO.

2014 年 10 月，SDO 捕捉到了一个非常大的太阳黑子群穿越日盘的情况。

This spot was part of NOAA 12192, the largest active region on the sun for almost a quarter of a century.

这个地点是 NOAA 12192 的一部分，NOAA 12192 是近四分之一个世纪以来太阳上最大的活跃区域。

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

美国宇航局戈达德太空飞行中心

In July 2025, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe — which, like the Solar Orbiter, orbits the sun and not Earth — took the closest-ever images of the sun, just 3.8 million miles from the solar surface, within the outer corona.

2025 年 7 月，美国宇航局的帕克太阳探测器（与太阳轨道飞行器一样，绕太阳而不是地球运行）拍摄了有史以来最接近太阳的图像，距离太阳表面仅 380 万英里，位于外日冕内。

This image shows the solar wind racing out from the corona.

这张图片显示了太阳风从日冕中疾驰而出。

NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Naval Research Laboratory

NASA/约翰·霍普金斯 APL/海军研究实验室

All previous views of the sun have been oriented toward its equator, taken from the plane on which Earth orbits.

以前对太阳的所有观察都是从地球轨道平面上拍摄的，朝向其赤道。

Solar Orbiter has provided the first look at the sun’s south pole.

太阳轨道飞行器首次观测了太阳南极。

In this image, we see the sun’s polar magnetic field in motion.

在这张图像中，我们看到太阳极地磁场的运动。

The magnetic network on the solar surface leaves imprints in the chromosphere, between the sun’s surface and the corona.

太阳表面的磁网络在太阳表面和日冕之间的色球层上留下了印记。

Over eight days of observations, Solar Orbiter measured the tracks of these imprints, which were elongated by the sun’s rotation.

经过八天的观察，太阳轨道飞行器测量了这些印记的轨迹，这些印记因太阳的自转而被拉长。

ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI-Team

ESA 和 NASA/太阳轨道飞行器/EUI 团队

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获取发送到您的电子邮件收件箱的最重要新闻的摘要

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《Quanta》杂志对评论进行审核，以促进知情、实质性、文明的对话。

Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected.

辱骂、亵渎、自我推销、误导、语无伦次或偏离主题的评论将被拒绝。

Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (New York time) and can only accept comments written in English.

版主在正常工作时间（纽约时间）有工作人员，并且只能接受英文评论。