Category Archives: Solar Science

Solar Science

Videos: Recent solar activity

The  Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)  imaged a big solar flare this week :  Science of the sun: NASA releases solar flare footage – BBC (includes video).

And here are a couple more videos of solar activity from the SDO Youtube gallery:

http://youtu.be/Ex-KkmTWlpU

Caption:

Powerful magnetic forces above an active region on the Sun twisted and pulled at a blob of plasma until it lost its connections and blew out into space (Mar. 26, 2014). The resultant swirling presented its own kind of graceful, almost ballet-like bends and sweeps. To offer some kind of size perspective that blob, before it broke away, was easily larger than several Earths. The event was observed in extreme ultraviolet light over about 5.5 hours beginning at 7:00 UT. The still image was taken at 10:45 UT. Credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory/NASA

http://youtu.be/22xuXNVs1M8

Caption:

The Sun unleashed a M-9.3 flare, just short of an X class (the largest) from an active region right at the Sun’s edge (Mar. 12-13, 2014). The bright flash is the tell tale sign of a flare. The brightness of the flare causes very bright saturation and blooming above and below the flare region on the CCD detector and caused extended diffraction patterns to spread out across the SDO imager. The video clip shows a smaller flare preceded this one as well. The video covers about 15 hours. The still shows the peak of the flare at 22:38UT on Mar. 12. Images were taken in extreme ultraviolet light, showing ionized iron at 10 million degrees. Credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory/NASA.

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Check out real and near real-time solar images and data on the HobbySpace  Sun & Space Weather page.

Education, Solar Science, Space participation

Sunspotter – citizen solar science

Sunspotter is a Zooniverse citizen science project in which participants ”

help to organize sunspot images in order of complexity to better understand and predict how the Sun’s magnetic activity affects us on Earth.

The Sunspotter blog includes interesting items such as this Space weather – a short guide and  The Making of a Magnetogram Part I: Lost in a Magnetic Field.

sunspot_size“Sunspots vary in size and tend to range between 1.500 – 50,000 km,
making some larger than Earth.Observed with the Swedish 1-m
Solar Telescope (SST). The SST is operated on the island of La Palma
by the Institute for Solar Physics in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque
de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias.
Observations: Göran Scharmer and Kai Langhans, ISP.
Image processing: Mats Löfdahl, ISP”

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See the HobbySpace Sun & Space Weather page here for real time images and data.

Solar Science, Space Policy

Earth barely escaped major solar weather disaster in 2012

Earth nearly got hit with a huge blast from the sun in July of 2012 that could have knocked out electrical systems for months or longer:

Solar Science

Solar cycle still on the rebound

The sun continued its resurgence in February:

 

ISES Solar Cycle Sunspot Number Progression - NOAA

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You can check out the state of the sun and space weather each day at the HobbySpace Sun & Space Weather page.

Multiple media, Solar Science

Video: Highlights of our sun from 4 years of SDO observations

NASA’s SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory) has a revamped website and great video with a music soundtrack displaying spectacular images of our home star: SDO is GO: Four Years of SDO and A New Look for our Website! – SDO Blog

http://youtu.be/NAg4qXsk99c

From the caption:

Information about the individual clips used in this video is available at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/…

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/…