Hot gas dances across the surface of the Sun in this picture from the orbiting TRACE satellite . The temperature of the gas is color coded so that blue represents hundreds of thousands of Kelvin , while red represents extreme temperatures in the millions of Kelvin. Hot gas is channeled into lanes ordered by the Sun's chaotic magnetic field . Pictures like these have shown that plasma heating occurs in relatively small regions.
Media Credits & Attribution
Credit: A. Title (Stanford Lockheed Institute), TRACE, NASA