NASA to study solar magnetic field

WASHINGTON, USA: US space agency NASA plans to study the sun's magnetic field in a "hard-to-observe area called the chromosphere".

The Solar Ultraviolet Magnetograph Investigation (SUMI) mission will be launched on Thursday, Xinhua reported.

Though there are already instruments that can measure these fields, they are constrained to observe the fields on a particular layer of the sun's surface.

To measure magnetic fields in the chromosphere, SUMI will observe the ultraviolet light emitted from two types of atoms on the sun, Magnesium 2 and Carbon 4.

This trip for SUMI is largely a test flight to make sure the instrument functions and to assess possible improvements, NASA said.