http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/21apr_firstlight/
incredible sun pix…must see.
by CJ | Apr 21, 2010 | Journal | 18 comments
18 Comments
Submit a Comment Cancel reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Lovely, aren’t they? I have the privilege of being peripherally involved with the science team for one of the instruments, and it’s been an exciting (and sleep-deprived) few weeks. The line at the end of the press conference about “science never sleeps” got a chuckle from some weary solar scientists here at Stanford.
The rhythm of the arc formation is unexpected and quite beautiful.
http://www.nasa.gov/mov/445812main_Pesnell_6-AIA%203%20wavelength%20dissolve%20H264.mov
Also from the SDO. Twitter user NASA_SDO is putting up tons of stuff today!
That’s both incredible and kind of scary. I think I like to be a little bit less intimate with the sun. (grin)
Scary it is—to see that one of those little magnetic fuzzes down on the solar surface is about the size of Earth. It’s a pretty big, powerful dragon that warms our hearth.
http://www.nasaimages.org/luna/servlet/detail/nasaNAS~12~12~64172~168567:Sun-and-Earth-in-Scale
This pushes Earth up close to the Sun so you can get a comparison.
And then there are the stars that make old Sol look petite—Betelgeuse, Antares, etc.
Not from the new, SDO telescope set-up, but the Astronomy Picture of the Day put up an older image last Friday which also had me simply fascinated: it’s the granulated surface of the sun in detail I have never seen before.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100416.html
That’s a very nice image too. SDO’s aren’t at quite that level of detail — the granules are a couple-three pixels across, mostly — but they cover the whole Sun at high cadence (multiple images every minute), which the very high-resolution telescopes can’t do.
Wow. Such cool pix! I never thought we’d see the sun this clearly in my lifetime.
I’ve been watching the SOHO site off and on for awhile.
The true dynamism of stellar objects is pretty scary
when you first start seeing the structures there. Since
I like to see things in the sky, I want that spaceborne
scope with the 5 mile wide lens to be built.
Looking back at the appalling ignorance about our solar system
when I was first in school, Lowells Mars with canali used
as an illustration, the Voyager flybys were a bigger leap for
mankind than any golfing expedition to the moon.
Some cynics have been hoping for Betelgeuse to Nova in 2012
just to give the neo Luddites something to obsess over.
I got to thinking as I looked at those images, Sir Arthur C. Clarke wrote about orbiting solar observatories in his short story, “The Wind From The Sun”. I remember reading it way back in the early 1960s in “Boys’ Life” magazine, a publication of the Boy Scouts of America. He described the occurrence of a solar flare that threatened the solar sailboat race and that the observatories had noted the fact and flashed the data to Earth, but woefully just a few microseconds behind the burst that was headed out to the planets. It was noteworthy that he described the velocity of the particles, not the wave, as a “leisurely four million miles per hour”.
Thank you to all for sharing the pictures with us.
Wow, this is gorgeous! Really, this is practically space porn and I feel a little guilty for spending so much time on the NASA site at work! 😉
Here;s a Science Daily article on the SDO that just got posted today. It provides some nice background info on the observatory, although only one picture (which you’ve already seen via CJ’s initial link).
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100421150815.htm
This is amazing stuff. For all the problems our world and lives are facing, with information like this, available to all, it’s a great time to be alive.
Here’s some more pretty pictures.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8638263.stm
This is the slideshow celebrating 20 years of Hubble.
These establish our signifigance in the universe placing
our problems in perspective…GRIN
Somewhat related, as it applies to our space program. I saw a video clip of Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the Director of the Hayden Planetarium in NYC, giving a reply to a question posed to him at the University of Buffalo (NY) on March 31, 2010. The clip is about 5 minutes long, and is as powerful a response as you could ask in one reply.
http://wimp.com/tysonnasa/
okay, my mistake on the tags. I guess copy and paste in your browser. I’m probably thinking WordPress likes the same coding that Dreamweaver does.
Fixed it for you. WordPress is tricky that way, and admin has more buttons.
Thank you. I hope you get a chance to view the clip. I really like Dr. Tyson and have liked him ever since I saw him on the first season of “The Universe” when he talked about putting a camera down through the ice on Europa and see what comes up and licks the camera.” I agree with him about NASA and our NEED to go out into space, not just to show off, but because we need to become more than a one-planet species. Many, many other arguments for, and I think they far outweigh the arguments that are against it.
Thank you again for fixing the link.