Even a blind pig can find an acorn, and even HuffPo occasionally has something worth seeing, like this video:
NASA has released a three-year time-lapse video of our star, compiled from incredible images captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft.
The time-lapse compresses about two images a day into a few minutes. And don’t miss these highlights in the video above (time-marked by NASA): a partial eclipse by the moon at 0:30, a flare at 1:11, and the brief appearance of comet Lovejoy at 1:28. [JAC note: these incursions are quick, so watch carefully!]
NASA’s SDO has filmed the sun since spring 2010, providing breathtaking images. So think of this latest video as a “best of” reel, complete with stirring background music.
The music? According to the YouTube site, it’s “”A Lady’s Errand of Love,’ composed and performed by Martin Lass” (his website is here).
That is absolutely brilliant. Can anyone tell me why the solar storms seem (& I must emphasise that) to be in two belts above and below the sun’s equator?
That struck me too. They do say it’s warmer in the tropics!
My guess — only a guess– is that has to do with global circulation in the sun, where a torus of circulation settles in above the equator and another settles in below the equator. Jupiter and to some extent Saturn have similar features of circulation.
Could it be perspective? We’re seeing directly down on the surface along the equator but obliquely across in the higher latitudes.
On the other hand, prominences in the higher latitudes don’t seem to have the same altitudes.
I wax poetic…
Version with commentary from a heliophysicist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaCG0wAjJSY
Yeah, that was informative. He points out a partial eclipse of the moon which flashes by.
Yes the commentary is really good and I would have missed quite a bit without it.
Spectacular images. Helps put things into perspective
If you really want to try to put things in their proper perspective…watch the version with the commentary, and pay particular attention to when he points out the transit of Venus.
That small circular shadow? It’s an entire planet the same size as the Earth.
And Venus is about halfway between the Earth and the Sun, so now imagine a circle with half the diameter…and that’s how big the Earth would look from our position if it was grazing the surface of the Sun.
All those sunspots, with those huge looping filaments streaming out? They’re storms, basically, almost but not completely unlike hurricanes…and the eyes of these storms are bigger than the entire Earth.
Sirius, the second-brightest star in the sky (after the Sun, of course!)…well, it’s about twice the diameter of our Sun…and it’s a half million times farther away. (The Sun, of course, is about a hundred million miles away.)
And Sirius is one of the closest stars to us…most bright stars are about ten times farther away still. The center of the Milky Way is a few thousand times farther away than Sirius; far too far away to be able to pick out individual stars without the aid of a very powerful telescope — and yet there’re so many of them that they look like a cloud of light stretching from horizon to horizon.
The Andromeda Galaxy, that faint smudge the size of the Moon that’s such a beautiful spiral galaxy when properly photographed, is a hundred times farther away than the center of the Milky Way.
And even that doesn’t really get us out of our own back yard….
Cheers,
b&
I really have to get a solar filter for my telescope. I just got the proper counter weight delivered in the mail so once the weather stops being miserable, I need to get out there and take some pictures!
By all means do that. You can easily make a solar filter for a few dollars. I bought a sheet of solar filter from ebay (cheap) and a sheet of foam board from an craft store. I used duct tape and epoxy glue to fit a decent solar filter for my ‘scope. Be very careful that you make it light tight.
Here is a video showing how to make a similar one with cardboard:
How to Make a Solar Filter
Cool thanks – I’ll try that. I had resisted solar filters because I had this stupid fear that my scope would get all heated up too much (I have an SCT).
One thing I mention to my classes is that you can see the Andromeda galaxy with the naked eye in a dark sky. And the light you are seeing is ‘old’ light. When that light had left the galaxy Homo erectus was walking around in Africa!
Oh, their, christian god! I saw It near the place where the flare occurred at 1:11. Then an additional flash of fire. Well. I guess that’s It then.
Looking on the bright side, since their god is dead, if the christians want the world to become uninhabitable they will have to do it by their own volition.
I was struck by how “rough” and “irregular” its luminosity is at the frequency being used, and how if the ancients had been able to see that, they might not have been so impressed by its “perfection”. Since God and the sun-god merge in a lot of archaic thought, the concept of God might be very different today.
“Where is your proof the sun exists? That’s right, atheist, there is none. That ball up there is God’s love concentrated into one area.”
– Everybody’s favourite fundie, Ray Comfort, on Facebook.
Oh my. That’s better than the banana comment and the bibliophile one.
Stars are illusive, or rather illusion inducive, beasts.
As they are essentially gravitationally assembled (and radiation pressurized) gas balls you would expect a fuzzy outline. But instead we see an abrupt edge where the gas goes from being opaque plasma to see through atomic gas with a much abrupter exponential than the atmospheric scale height.
And then you have to figure dynamics on top of that. :-/
One odd thing in the expert commentary was when he described the SDO tilt as due to instrument calibration. Why would it need tilting?
I don’t know the SDO orbit, maybe there is something going on there as well. But the main reason any unmanned craft tilts from time to time, as I understand it, is because any reaction wheels used for attitude control have spun up to max velocity. During de-spin the necessary use of thrusters make for some less well controlled attitudes.
Maybe somebody can help with a question since I am a novice on the sun.
I heard the enormous amounts of energy released in the flares can cause extreme weather patterns here on earth by affecting the magnetic field.
sun spots >> sun flares (charged particles) >> magnetic field shift >> shifting ocean and jet stream currents >> extreme weather like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, etc.
ALso I read that solar storms can affect our own nervous systems and can trigger anxiety, dizziness, and nausea (and may affect short-term memory). I don’t know what is quack science here and what is legitimate.
Ignoring the effects on astronauts & our space-based equipment ~ just looking at effects at [or near] the Earth’s surface…
There are a lot of quack science sites out there such as the laughable Carlini Institute that claim solar flares & coronal mass ejections have biological effects, but all I could find at legitimate sources was the suggestion of SOME evidence that the extra-noisy magnetic field can scramble pigeon navigation for a while.
The obvious effects for us *Earthers* is disruption of some [short wave?] radio transmissions & power outages due to the way we’ve designed our power grids.
The amount of energy injected into the atmosphere by a solar flare or CME is much less than the combined energy of the 1.4 BILLION lightning flashes per year that we enjoy. I would think that this activity in our atmosphere due to lightning will cause a lot more anxiety than a solar flare!
As to earthquakes ~ noooo chance.
Reblogged this on Mark Solock Blog.