sun's atmosphere
A canyon-shaped hole has opened up in the sun's atmosphere, and it is spewing solar wind into space. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory is monitoring the structure, which stretches more than 700,000 km from end to end.

The massive structure is called a "coronal hole."

Coronal holes are places in the sun's atmosphere where magnetic fields peel back and allow hot gas to escape.

A gaseous stream of solar wind flowing from this opening will reach Earth on July 8th or 9th, possibly sparking polar geomagnetic storms when it arrives.

High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras, especially in the southern hemisphere where dark winter skies favor visibility.


The visible disk remains spotless for the 12th day in a row.

A region of emerging flux was observed near N03W63 but the spots did not persist long enough to be assigned an active region number.

No Earth-directed CMEs were observed in available coronagraph imagery.

Solar activity is expected to be very low throughout the forecast period (05-07 Jul).