TRACE

TRACE looks at ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. This radiation comes from very hot gas at about one million degrees. This picture is a great example of the fine detail that TRACE can see on the Sun. It shows very fine loops of hot material that follow the magnetic fields in the Sun’s atmosphere. If you’d like to find out more, check out my section on ‘Loops’ in the Magnetic Sun.

TRACE was not launched in the same way as the other spacecraft we have described. Because it is a relatively small spacecraft, it was launched in April 1998 on a Pegasus rocket, but only after that rocket had been carried to a height of 12,000 metres by an aircraft.

The great thing about TRACE is that it takes very detailed images, but in order to do that it can only take pictures of small regions at a time. To get a picture of the whole Sun it must take a series of pictures and combine then into a mosaic, as has been done in this picture

If you want to see a bit of REAL action on the Sun, take a look at these movies. We’d never seen anything like this before TRACE started work.