NASA's new sun photo shows massive coronal hole

Pictured: The dark area across the top of the sun in this image is a coronal hole, a region on the sun where the magnetic field is open to interplanetary space, sending coronal material speeding out in what is called a high-speed solar wind stream. One of the large was the Halloween Solar Storm that took place between October and November of 2003.

This solar storm allowed for the observation of auroras at latitudes as low as Madrid and even the Caribbean Sea. These murky, low density regions of the corona-the outermost atmosphere of the sun retains little solar material, and have lower temperatures, which eventually appears much darker than their surroundings. The wind stream comes from the hole itself, which is an outstanding 50 Earths in size - meaning you could fit a few dozen of our own planet just in the dark spot on the Sunday. If aimed toward Earth, that spells the makings of a geomagnetic storm: a phenomenon that can affect power and navigation for satellites orbiting the Earth as well as radio communication. Many solar storms have been experienced before and the last noticeable occurred in June 2015. They also initially predicted that auroras are to be visible as far down as Pennsylvania, Iowa and Oregon.

The coronal hole can not be seen with the naked eye (though, it's already hard to watch sun with human eye).

According to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) officials, as the coronal hole continues it way westward on the sun's surface, the solar winds will continue to be strong. Thus, bright auroras will likely continue — at least around the Arctic Circle. For instance, solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which both explodes the corona's material outward due to the augmented magnetic activity. The coronal hole produced a geomagnetic storm near Earth that resulted in several nights of aurora.