For Your Astronomers: NASA Heliophysics: SDO: Year 4

[6Foot2]

 

The sun is always changing and NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory is always watching. Launched on Feb. 11, 2010, SDO keeps a 24-hour eye on the entire disk of the sun, with a prime view of the graceful dance of solar material coursing through the sun's atmosphere, the corona. SDO's fourth year in orbit was no exception: NASA is releasing a movie of some of SDO's best sightings of the year, including massive solar explosions and giant sunspot shows.

 

SDO captures images of the sun in 10 different wavelengths, each of which helps highlight a different temperature of solar material. Different temperatures can, in turn, show specific structures on the sun such as solar flares, which are giant explosions of light and x-rays, or coronal loops, which are streams of solar material traveling up and down looping magnetic field lines. The movie shows examples of both, as well as what's called prominence eruptions, when masses of solar material leap off the sun. The movie also shows a sunspot group on the solar surface. This sunspot, a magnetically strong and complex region appearing in mid-January 2014, was one of the largest in nine years.

 

Scientists study these images to better understand the complex electromagnetic system causing the constant movement on the sun, which can ultimately have an effect closer to Earth, too: Flares and another type of solar explosion called coronal mass ejections can sometimes disrupt technology in space. Moreover, studying our closest star is one way of learning about other stars in the galaxy. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. built, operates, and manages the SDO spacecraft for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.

 

This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/...

[mikeyd101]

Its so easy to under estimate the immense forces at work here. Very cool tho thanks for sharing the link, i've downloaded them and will pass them onto science dept.

[6Foot2]

A Prominence on the Sun

 

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1509/solarsaurus_friedman.jpg

 

Link: APOD: 2015 September 19 - A Prominence on the Sun

[Andrew_C]

Didn't you know? The sun is going to go out next month! NASA says so here!!

[6Foot2]

Didn't you know? The sun is going to go out next month! NASA says so here!!

 

Um...OK. That's nice. I am looking forward to a nice cup of tea while I watch.

[sonofsanta]

Didn't you know? The sun is going to go out next month! NASA says so here!!

 

Oh my word so much stupid in one page, and I don't even think it's a satire site.

 

I especially like the diagram that's just low resolution enough that you can't make out any of the labelling:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]32241[/ATTACH]

 

I just, I mean, but, science!

[Andrew_C]

I don't even think it's a satire site.

I don't know WHAT to think about it!

[6Foot2]

@sonofsanta: Your picture link doesn't seem to be working. Here is the same image rehosted:

 

 

And a more legible copy:

 

http://annesastronomynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/The-Sun-Diagram.jpg

[sonofsanta]

@sonofsanta: Your picture link doesn't seem to be working. Here is the same image rehosted:

 

Bloomin' forum... it's the same old problem of double clicking to change the size, then everything greying out and having to refresh the page, and when you do it looks like it's working and it'll show the image being posted, but secretly it's not actually there... I wish I could just work out the pattern of why it breaks, because it isn't consistent.

 

Anyway. Yes. That was the picture. Cheers