The Sun is getting feisty … 

The star at the heart of our solar system has released three X-class solar flares (the most powerful class of flares) and their associated waves of charged particles in the past 24 hours. Luckily for us, they have been pointed away from Earth, as seen in the upper left of the video above from NASA.

NASA’s SDO and SOHO satellites captured the explosive magnetic arcs and bursts of plasma in stunning form in the video, which is full-screen worthy. By viewing the sun through different wavelength filters (the colored angstrom filters you see above) we can zoom in on activity happening at different temperatures and involving different ionized elements from hydrogen to iron. 

This happens as the sun ramps up for its predicted 11-year solar maximum later in 2013. Wear your sun(plasma)block!

Don’t you wish there was sound in space so you could hear these things? Sigh.

NASA’s Solar Fleet: Capturing the Awesome

Here’s a fantastic video showing a May 1, 2013 solar eruption from four different NASA solar observation spacecraft. You can appreciate the different perspectives and filters that are offered by SDO, SOHO and the STEREO twins, and why the big picture is always more informative than any alone.

(More at Bad Astronomy)

Source: Slate

Threading the Corona Top: The magnetic filaments of the sun’s corona, captured at top by Miloslav Druckmüller in a composite of 38 different images during a solar eclipse. You’ll want to see the super-huge version here, trust me. It will change you. Bottom: “Coronal rain” captured by NASA’s SDO satellite. The superheated coronal plasma is seen traveling along magnetic field lines during a coronal mass ejection.  The corona cooks at over a million degrees Kelvin compared to the relatively frigid 5800 K of the photosphere below it. Exactly why this plasma is so superheated isn’t completely known, but it might be subject to the same kind of magnetic induction as an electric generator. Whatever the cause, the normally invisible lines of the sun’s magnetic field are drawn in brilliant form within the corona, and charged plasma is the paint. You can get a good look at the solar corona today (right NOW for those catching this post live at 5:30 PM ET on May 9th) during today’s annular eclipse, being broadcast live from the South Pacific by the Slooh Space Camera. (top image via Colossal)
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Threading the Corona Top: The magnetic filaments of the sun’s corona, captured at top by Miloslav Druckmüller in a composite of 38 different images during a solar eclipse. You’ll want to see the super-huge version here, trust me. It will change you. Bottom: “Coronal rain” captured by NASA’s SDO satellite. The superheated coronal plasma is seen traveling along magnetic field lines during a coronal mass ejection.  The corona cooks at over a million degrees Kelvin compared to the relatively frigid 5800 K of the photosphere below it. Exactly why this plasma is so superheated isn’t completely known, but it might be subject to the same kind of magnetic induction as an electric generator. Whatever the cause, the normally invisible lines of the sun’s magnetic field are drawn in brilliant form within the corona, and charged plasma is the paint. You can get a good look at the solar corona today (right NOW for those catching this post live at 5:30 PM ET on May 9th) during today’s annular eclipse, being broadcast live from the South Pacific by the Slooh Space Camera. (top image via Colossal)
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Threading the Corona

Top: The magnetic filaments of the sun’s corona, captured at top by Miloslav Druckmüller in a composite of 38 different images during a solar eclipse. You’ll want to see the super-huge version here, trust me. It will change you.

Bottom: “Coronal rain” captured by NASA’s SDO satellite. The superheated coronal plasma is seen traveling along magnetic field lines during a coronal mass ejection. 

The corona cooks at over a million degrees Kelvin compared to the relatively frigid 5800 K of the photosphere below it. Exactly why this plasma is so superheated isn’t completely known, but it might be subject to the same kind of magnetic induction as an electric generator. Whatever the cause, the normally invisible lines of the sun’s magnetic field are drawn in brilliant form within the corona, and charged plasma is the paint.

You can get a good look at the solar corona today (right NOW for those catching this post live at 5:30 PM ET on May 9th) during today’s annular eclipse, being broadcast live from the South Pacific by the Slooh Space Camera.

(top image via Colossal)

What’s An Annular Eclipse (Besides “Beautiful”)? Do you love the sun so much you want to marry it? Well here’s your band of gold. Annular refers to something “ring-shaped”, and an annular eclipse is one that leaves us with a tiny stroke of light surrounding the opaque moon between us. Why are some eclipses complete and some are annular? It’s just a coincidence, thanks to the elliptical orbits of the Earth, moon and sun. The Moon just happens to be about 400 times smaller than the sun and it’s also about 400 times closer to Earth. And because it’s in an elliptical orbit, sometimes it completely blocks out the sun when it passes perfectly between us (total eclipse) and sometimes it leaves a little around the edges (annular eclipse).  Still curious? Read more. If you happen to be out in the middle of the South Pacific on May 10, 2013, you can see one for yourself (with the right fliters and safety equipment, of course … never look at the sun!!). Unfortunately, most of us live on land, so this picture will have to do. (image via Wikimedia Commons)
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What’s An Annular Eclipse (Besides “Beautiful”)?

Do you love the sun so much you want to marry it? Well here’s your band of gold. Annular refers to something “ring-shaped”, and an annular eclipse is one that leaves us with a tiny stroke of light surrounding the opaque moon between us.

Why are some eclipses complete and some are annular? It’s just a coincidence, thanks to the elliptical orbits of the Earth, moon and sun. The Moon just happens to be about 400 times smaller than the sun and it’s also about 400 times closer to Earth. And because it’s in an elliptical orbit, sometimes it completely blocks out the sun when it passes perfectly between us (total eclipse) and sometimes it leaves a little around the edges (annular eclipse).  Still curious? Read more.

If you happen to be out in the middle of the South Pacific on May 10, 2013, you can see one for yourself (with the right fliters and safety equipment, of course … never look at the sun!!). Unfortunately, most of us live on land, so this picture will have to do.

(image via Wikimedia Commons)

Spring Fling The sun just released a M6.5 class flare today, a merely medium-powered burst of solar energy. While it’s the strongest flare yet this year (2013 is predicted to be a maximum in the solar activity cycle), it likely won’t affect much down here. I just thought it was really pretty, as captured here by NASA’s SDO satellite.  (via NASA)
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Spring Fling

The sun just released a M6.5 class flare today, a merely medium-powered burst of solar energy. While it’s the strongest flare yet this year (2013 is predicted to be a maximum in the solar activity cycle), it likely won’t affect much down here.

I just thought it was really pretty, as captured here by NASA’s SDO satellite. 

(via NASA)

Source: nasa.gov

Sonic Transit of Venus

Robert Alexander is an astronomical “sonification specialist”. He uses his musical training to take non-audible data and convert them into soundscapes to provide NASA scientists with a novel way to study the emissions from our Sun.

NASA satellites are constantly collecting data along the extreme range of emissions from the Sun. Alexander first compresses days of data into just seconds and then assigns different emissions (such as the various excited states of carbon) to different tones. 

Above, he used signals collected during the 2012 Transit of Venus to help create a larger musical composition (listen to the full 17-minute version here). Listen to more of his solarsonic creations at NPR.

Want to know more about the different families of solar emissions? Check out the false-color palette of our solar disk as seen by NASA’s SDO satellite.

Source: youtube.com

Solar Palette If you look at the Sun (which you shouldn’t, ever), you just see white light (for the second or so before your retinas are permanently scorched. That’s a mixture of all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes respond to, between 390 and 700 nanometers (or about 3,900 to 7,000 angstroms). And there is a lot we can learn about the Sun by viewing it in that range, from studying its undulating surface swirls to its rotation.  But scientists at places like NASA can learn even more by extending their “eyes” beyond the visible.That’s what this new mosaic from the Solar Dynamics Observatory shows us. It represents all of SDO’s detectable wavelengths and the ions and temperatures that those wavelengths represent. Viewing each of those can tell us a deeper, richer story of the solar physics at work in and on the fusion-powered energy source that feeds our planet. I’ve captured the false colored hues that NASA scientists assign to each and put it in a digital palette. I can’t help but feel a bit amazed at not only the extreme temperatures at play (millions of Kelvin!) but also the extreme beauty. Our Sun is the best sun. To dig into more detail about each wavelength and what it measures, check out this NASA article.
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Solar Palette If you look at the Sun (which you shouldn’t, ever), you just see white light (for the second or so before your retinas are permanently scorched. That’s a mixture of all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes respond to, between 390 and 700 nanometers (or about 3,900 to 7,000 angstroms). And there is a lot we can learn about the Sun by viewing it in that range, from studying its undulating surface swirls to its rotation.  But scientists at places like NASA can learn even more by extending their “eyes” beyond the visible.That’s what this new mosaic from the Solar Dynamics Observatory shows us. It represents all of SDO’s detectable wavelengths and the ions and temperatures that those wavelengths represent. Viewing each of those can tell us a deeper, richer story of the solar physics at work in and on the fusion-powered energy source that feeds our planet. I’ve captured the false colored hues that NASA scientists assign to each and put it in a digital palette. I can’t help but feel a bit amazed at not only the extreme temperatures at play (millions of Kelvin!) but also the extreme beauty. Our Sun is the best sun. To dig into more detail about each wavelength and what it measures, check out this NASA article.
Zoom Info

Solar Palette

If you look at the Sun (which you shouldn’t, ever), you just see white light (for the second or so before your retinas are permanently scorched. That’s a mixture of all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes respond to, between 390 and 700 nanometers (or about 3,900 to 7,000 angstroms). And there is a lot we can learn about the Sun by viewing it in that range, from studying its undulating surface swirls to its rotation. 

But scientists at places like NASA can learn even more by extending their “eyes” beyond the visible.That’s what this new mosaic from the Solar Dynamics Observatory shows us. It represents all of SDO’s detectable wavelengths and the ions and temperatures that those wavelengths represent. Viewing each of those can tell us a deeper, richer story of the solar physics at work in and on the fusion-powered energy source that feeds our planet.

I’ve captured the false colored hues that NASA scientists assign to each and put it in a digital palette. I can’t help but feel a bit amazed at not only the extreme temperatures at play (millions of Kelvin!) but also the extreme beauty. Our Sun is the best sun.

To dig into more detail about each wavelength and what it measures, check out this NASA article.