NASA's SDO images from March 16, 2015, reveal not one but two massive holes in the sun, decribed as "dark patches, known as coronal holes." According to the NASA.gov website, the larger of the holes, near the southern pole, covers anywhere from 6 to 8 percent of the total surface, 142 billion miles, while the one at the opposite pole they approximate as stretching 3.8 billion miles on the sun.
The first image below is from March 16, 2015, via NASA, the second from the Nemesis Maturity video showing the same holes from March 17, 2015 imagery, as can be seen on the timestamp at the bottom of the image. The third image offers veiwers a visual as to how massive these holes are by providing the "earth scale," within the larger of the two coronal holes in the sun.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, captured this solar image on March 16, 2015, which clearly shows two dark patches, known as coronal holes. The larger coronal hole of the two, near the southern pole, covers an estimated 6- to 8-percent of the total solar surface. While that may not sound significant, it is one of the largest polar holes scientists have observed in decades. The smaller coronal hole, towards the opposite pole, is long and narrow. It covers about 3.8 billion square miles on the sun - only about 0.16-percent of the solar surface.
Coronal holes are lower density and temperature regions of the sun’s outer atmosphere, known as the corona. Coronal holes can be a source of fast solar wind of solar particles that envelop the Earth.
The magnetic field in these regions extends far out into space rather than quickly looping back into the sun’s surface. Magnetic fields that loop up and back down to the surface can be seen as arcs in non-coronal hole regions of the image, including over the lower right horizon.
The bright active region on the lower right quadrant is the same region that produced solar flares last week.
