(UNDATED) – NASA on Sunday shared a photo on Facebook and Twitter of the sun looking a lot like a giant flaming jack-o’-lantern.
The space agency captured the spooky image on Oct. 8, 2014. The face is the result of active regions of the sun burning more brightly than others, NASA said.
They are markers of an intense and complex set of magnetic fields hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona,” NASA said. “This image blends together two sets of extreme ultraviolet wavelengths at 171 and 193 Ångströms, typically colorized in gold and yellow, to create a particularly Halloween-like appearance.”
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which took the photo, is constantly monitoring the sun from its orbit in space.
NASA is inviting people to download a high-res image of the pumpkin sun, “just in time for Halloween.”
