Clare here! I'm going to tell you about solar fireflies. At least that's what I call them, but they are really known as solar X-ray bright points. On Earth, a firefly is a small insect about the size of your thumbnail. When they fly around at night they have little lights in them that wink on and off. My solar fireflies are a bit different!
Take a look at this picture of the solar corona. It's a picture of X-rays coming from the Sun. You can see some large bright regions, where the X-rays are strong, but you can also see many small bright dots. These are my solar fireflies.
As well as in X-rays, we can also see these fireflies in ultraviolet radiation coming from the Sun.
Close up, X-ray bright points seem to have wings, as you can see on this close up X-ray image.
Sometimes X-ray bright points appear like twisted tubes of glowing plasma. Here is a photograph of one taken in ultraviolet light . It was taken by the solar satellite called TRACE.
Sometimes fireflies get so twisted they explode and disappear. Believe me, you wouldn't want to be standing too close when one of these goes off!
