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Narrator: Scientists have now spotted signs of a structured boundary between

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the sun and the rest of the solar system. The sun is

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not a hard ball in space, nor is it a giant ball of

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fire. Instead, it's a mass of charged particles and magnetic

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fields. This material extends outward, flowing beyond the surface

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of the sun, creating an atmosphere that spreads throughout our

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solar system. But the transition is not perfectly seamless.

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Our star can be characterized into layers. Each region

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has its own temperature ranges and special properties. We call the sun's

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atmosphere the corona. The steady breeze of

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particles flowing out from the sun and filling the space between the planets

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is the solar wind. New research indicates that there is a

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discernible transition between the corona and the solar wind.

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This difference is marked by a visible change in the consistency

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of solar material departing the sun.

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About 20 million miles out from the sun, the very nature of the solar material

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changes, and the sun's magnetic field no longer

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controls its movement. At this point, the flow becomes more

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turbulent. Like water from a squirt gun, the plasma

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starts as a stream, but then breaks into drops. The farther out

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it goes, the weaker the sun's magnetic control of the material, and

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the less clear its form becomes. To find this transition,

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scientists took images of the faint solar wind and used an

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algorithm to dim the competing brightness of background stars and

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dust. These are the first movies of the solar wind

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itself in a previously unmapped region,

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helping us understand what's flowing from the sun, through the space

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around our planet and out to the edges of our solar system--crucial

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information as we continue to explore.

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[Bell tone]

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