Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) launch today.

Cosimo · 11 Feb 2010 at 15:57

Hot off the press:

Cosimo · 11 Feb 2010 at 16:36

Away goes the Atlas V with SDO onboard:

Cosimo · 11 Feb 2010 at 17:53

I’m happy to report that separation was completed successfully and SDO is now in orbit. The satellite has deployed its solar arrays and operations are going to plan. The scientific mission is now underway.

TheBigCheese · 11 Feb 2010 at 18:57

Oh rats, curses, damn and blast, I missed the launch

I've been so busy today I totally forgot about it, just had my head in the clouds.

I'll have to make do with HD youtube footage and poor attempts at launch humour in my posts...

Glad it went successfully though

Cosimo · 12 Feb 2010 at 00:50

To wrap things up SDO deployment:

Cosimo · 15 Apr 2010 at 08:54

Isn’t the sun amazing:

STEREO (Behind) had a nice profile view of spiraling corona loops above an active region after it had just popped off a coronal mass ejection (CME) on April 3, 2010. Faint clouds of material from the CME can be seen billowing into space at more than a million miles per hour. Right afterwards, magnetic forces trying to reorganize themselves generate a series of white arcs visible in extreme UV light. We are observing not the magnetic fields themselves, but electrically charged atoms spiraling along the field lines. The video clip covers one day of activity.

While we wait for the 21st enjoy this:

Camilla has only 6 days left before the action really starts.

Marine Iguana · 15 Apr 2010 at 08:57

simulatorman said:
Isn’t the sun amazing:

It sure is

Love vids of the sun so much awesome going on at once watching that makes me look like this --->

Cosimo · 17 Apr 2010 at 08:57

Another snippet before the 21st:

A massive prominence erupted from the Sun on April 13, 2010. The best view of the eruption was from the STEREO Ahead spacecraft, as shown in this COR1 movie, combined with Helium II 304 Angstrom images of the solar disk from EUVI. This was one of the largest prominence eruptions seen during the STEREO mission so far.

GarethSouthgate · 17 Apr 2010 at 23:42

Wow

thanks for the updates.

Cosimo · 18 Apr 2010 at 12:30

A still of the prominence captured by STEREO:

Don’t forget SDO goes live on the 21st at 19:00 BST.

Marine Iguana · 18 Apr 2010 at 12:33

Awesome picture at least the sun is a bit more active than it has been over the winter was well boring over Christmas and early in the year

Radiation · 18 Apr 2010 at 12:51

Will this one have better images than soho?

I looked at the specs on the site but couldn't see what kind of sensors it has, it does show a high data rate though so i guess it could stream hd video?

I would love to see a live hd stream of the sun and earth one day, hope this one can do that as it would be so cool to see!

Edit: just watched the videos on the first page, looks good but doesn't seem like we will get a live stream, makes me wonder if any sat sends a live video stream, i mean tv sats can so what's stopping scientific ones doing so apart from them choosing not to and cramming in lots of other data?

Greenlizard0 · 18 Apr 2010 at 14:16

Sorry bit confused, is this the Indian rocket that failed?

Berserker · 18 Apr 2010 at 14:28

Very confused, because no it isn't.

Cosimo · 18 Apr 2010 at 14:29

Greenlizard0 said:
Sorry bit confused, is this the Indian rocket that failed?

No, the thread is about SDO with a few tasters (from STEREO) of what will come later this week from SDO.

"Here comes the sun"

Cosimo · 21 Apr 2010 at 20:14

Here we go, the first SDO images are here at last:

Cosimo · 22 Apr 2010 at 09:18

.... and some more:

Lots more goodies here:

http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/firstlight/

Enjoy.

Cosimo · 22 Apr 2010 at 17:27

Now in video:

Radiation · 22 Apr 2010 at 17:37

Great images but what's with the compression, like ones from soho and stereo they appear to use quite a bit of compression on their images and video?

Cosimo · 23 Apr 2010 at 09:47

Given that they are taken from a great distance and we don’t know the resolving power of the cameras and how they’ve been edited then I’m not surprised that there is some compression. I’ve certainly added quite a lot to the posted ones.