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01-25-23

133 Days of SOL

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NASA Goddard dicit:

This video chronicles solar activity from Aug. 12 to Dec. 22, 2022, as captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). From its orbit in space around Earth, SDO has steadily imaged the Sun in 4K x 4K resolution for nearly 13 years. This information has enabled countless new discoveries about the workings of our closest star and how it influences the solar system.

With a triad of instruments, SDO captures an image of the Sun every 0.75 seconds. The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument alone captures images every 12 seconds at 10 different wavelengths of light. This 133-day time lapse showcases photos taken at a wavelength of 17.1 nanometers, which is an extreme-ultraviolet wavelength that shows the Sun’s outermost atmospheric layer: the corona. Compiling images taken 108 seconds apart, the movie condenses 133 days, or about four months, of solar observations into 59 minutes. The video shows bright active regions passing across the face of the Sun as it rotates. The Sun rotates approximately once every 27 days. The loops extending above the bright regions are magnetic fields that have trapped hot, glowing plasma. These bright regions are also the source of solar flares, which appear as bright flashes as magnetic fields snap together in a process called magnetic reconnection.

While SDO has kept an unblinking eye pointed toward the Sun, there have been a few moments it missed. Some of the dark frames in the video are caused by Earth or the Moon eclipsing SDO as they pass between the spacecraft and the Sun. Other blackouts are caused by instrumentation being down or data errors. SDO transmits 1.4 terabytes of data to the ground every day. The images where the Sun is off-center were observed when SDO was calibrating its instruments.

SDO and other NASA missions will continue to watch our Sun in the years to come, providing further insights about our place in space and information to keep our astronauts and assets safe.

Music Credit: The music is a continuous mix from Lars Leonhard’s “Geometric Shapes” album, courtesy of the artist.

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger (PAO): Lead Producer/Tom Bridgman (SVS): Lead Visualizer/Scott Wiessinger (PAO): Editor

 

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07-1-20

SDO Decade

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NASA dicit:

As of June 2020, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory — SDO — has now been watching the Sun non-stop for over a full decade. From its orbit in space around the Earth, SDO has gathered 425 million high-resolution images of the Sun, amassing 20 million gigabytes of data over the past 10 years. This information has enabled countless new discoveries about the workings of our closest star and how it influences the solar system.

With a triad of instruments, SDO captures an image of the Sun every 0.75 seconds. The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument alone captures images every 12 seconds at 10 different wavelengths of light. This 10-year time lapse showcases photos taken at a wavelength of 17.1 nanometers, which is an extreme ultraviolet wavelength that shows the Sun’s outermost atmospheric layer — the corona. Compiling one photo every hour, the movie condenses a decade of the Sun into 61 minutes. The video shows the rise and fall in activity that occurs as part of the Sun’s 11-year solar cycle and notable events, like transiting planets and eruptions.

While SDO has kept an unblinking eye pointed towards the Sun, there have been a few moments it missed. The dark frames in the video are caused by Earth or the Moon eclipsing SDO as they pass between the spacecraft and the Sun. A longer blackout in 2016 was caused by a temporary issue with the AIA instrument that was successfully resolved after a week. The images where the Sun is off-center were observed when SDO was calibrating its instruments.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO/Scott Wiessinger (USRA): Lead Producer/Tom Bridgman (GST): Lead Data Visualizer/Mara Johnson-Groh (Wyle Information Systems): Lead Science Writer/Lars Leonhard

 

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02-20-20

SDO Anniversary

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NASA dicit:

In February 2020, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory — SDO — is celebrating its 10th year in space. Over the past decade the spacecraft has kept a constant eye on the Sun, studying how the Sun creates solar activity and drives space weather — the dynamic conditions in space that impact the entire solar system, including Earth.

Since its launch on February 11, 2010, SDO has collected millions of scientific images of our nearest star, giving scientists new insights into its workings. SDO’s measurements of the Sun — from the interior to the atmosphere, magnetic field, and energy output — have greatly contributed to our understanding of our closest star. SDO’s images have also become iconic — if you’ve ever seen a close-up of activity on the Sun, it was likely from an SDO image.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scott Wiessinger (USRA): Lead Producer/Mara Johnson-Groh (Wyle Information Systems): Science Writer/Barb Mattson (University of Maryland College Park): Narrator

 

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02-19-20

Plasma Patterns

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NASA dicit:

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) stares at our sun in high-definition from space. Under the spacecraft’s constant gaze the sun’s invisible magnetic field betrays its presence by bending charged gas, or plasma, into entrancing patterns. In February 2012, SDO captured curious images in which plasma near the sun’s surface appears to swirl like debris in a tornado. But was the plasma really rotating? Some scientists believe the spinning is an illusion caused by a 2-D projection of 3-D motion, while others think it is truly twisting. Newer observations may show more clearly that some of the material is moving toward Earth while some is moving away, pointing to genuine rotation. If that’s the case, bunched magnetic fields at the sun’s surface could be causing the elaborate plasma dance by becoming tangled themselves.

Video credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Visualizer/Animator: Tom Bridgman (GST)/Producers: Michael Starobin (HTSI),Scott Wiessinger (USRA)/Scientists: Yang Su (University of Graz), Todd Hoeksema (Stanford)/Writer: Chris Cesare (USRA)

 

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03-20-19

SDO Catches Lunar Transit

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NASA dicit:

On the evening of March 6, 2019, the Moon started to transit the Sun, then doubled back and retraced its steps in the other direction — at least, that’s what it looked like from the perspective of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, in orbit around Earth. The relative speeds and positions of the Moon, the Sun and NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory resulted in this unusual lunar transit where the Moon appears to pause and reverse course.

Video Credit: NASA

 

 

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NASA dixit:

“While many in the U.S. experienced a total solar eclipse on August 21, 2017, SDO’s perspective, observing the Sun from Earth orbit, afforded it a view of a partial eclipse. This movie, created from images taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, shows the Sun first in visible light, and then in 171-angstrom extreme ultraviolet light. The apparent slight movement of the Sun is because SDO has a hard time keeping the Sun centered in its images during eclipses, with so much light being blocked by the Moon. The fine guidance systems on SDO’s instruments need to see the whole Sun in order keep the images centered from one exposure to the next. Once the transit was over, the fine guidance systems started back up, once again providing steady images of the Sun.”

Video credit: NASA

 

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