Hole in the Sun
Every so often, the sun's magnetic field opens freely into interplanetary space, creating a temporary "hole" in the sun's corona. This type of phenomenon might have even been seen by early astronomers like Galileo and Copernicus, which would have made them realize that the sun had "spots of darkness", leading them to the astronomical theories we remember them for to this day. At the same time, this loss of field integrity is responsible for another well-known phenomenon here on Earth: the auroral lights, which are produced when the sun's open magnetic field releases solar radiation in our direction, which then slams into our Earth's magnetic field. It tends to focus around the North and South poles because the Earth's magnetic poles are at almost the same spot as the axis around which the Earth spins.
P.S. This APOD was supposed to be put up around September 3rd.
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