NASA shares image of fiery jack-o'-lantern sun

NASA is getting in the Halloween spirit by sharing a striking image of the sun that looks a lot like a flaming jack-o’-lantern.

The Goddard Space Flight Center re-shared the 2014 photo Sunday that shows fiery “active regions” on the sun that resemble two eyes, a nose and a mouth.

“Even our star celebrates the spooky season,” the NASA Sun and Space social media accounts wrote over the weekend.

It's #SunDay! ☀️ Even our star celebrates the spooky season — in 2014, active regions on the Sun created this jack-o'-lantern face, as seen in ultraviolet light by our Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite. ���� Download in high resolution: https://t.co/GVWPlfb1h2 #Halloween pic.twitter.com/3QlSFHWIYO

— NASA Sun & Space (@NASASun) October 27, 2019

The agency’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) took a series of images five years ago on Oct. 8 at varying wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet light and combined two of them, gold and yellow, to produce the orange pumpkin-like result.

“The active regions appear brighter because those are areas that emit more light and energy -- markers of an intense and complex set of magnetic fields hovering in the sun’s atmosphere, the corona,” the NASA Scientific Visualization Studio wrote online in 2014.

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  This imaging shows the sun in 193 angstrom light as captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, one of two images used to create the jack-o'-lantern effect. (NASA)

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  This imaging shows the sun in 171 angstrom light as captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, one of two images used to create the jack-o'-lantern effect. (NASA)