Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) launch today.

Cosimo · 28 Apr 2010 at 09:57

Prepare to be amazed:

A magnetic filament erupts on April 19th. The black "hair-like object" is a speck of dust on the CCD camera. Credit: SDO/AIA.

Just last week, scientists working with NASA's new Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) released the most astonishing movies of the sun anyone had ever seen. Now, they're doing it again.

"SDO has just observed a massive eruption on the sun—one of the biggest in years," says Lika Guhathakurta of NASA headquarters in Washington DC. "The footage is not only dramatic, but also could solve a longstanding mystery of solar physics."

Karel Schrijver of Lockheed Martin's Solar and Astrophysics Lab is leading the analysis. "We can see a billion tons of magnetized plasma blasting into space while debris from the explosion falls back onto the sun surface. These may be our best data yet."

The movie, recorded on April 19th, spans four hours of actual time and more than 100,000 km of linear space. "It's huge," says Schrijver. Indeed, the entire planet Earth could fit between the plasma streamers with room to spare.

A color-coded temperature movie of the eruption. Red and oranges are cool (60,000 K - 80,000 K); blues and greens are hot (1,000,000 - 2,200,000 K). The black "hair-like object" is a speck of dust on the CCD camera. Credit: SDO/AIA.

One of SDO's game-changing capabilities is temperature sensing. Using an array of ultraviolet telescopes called the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA), the observatory can remotely measure the temperature of gas in the sun's atmosphere. Coronal rain turns out to be relatively cool—"only" 60,000 K. When the rains falls, it is supported, in part, by an underlying cushion of much hotter material, between 1,000,000 and 2,200,000 K.

"You can see the hot gas in the color-coded temperature movie," says Schrijver. "Cool material is red, hotter material is blue-green. The hot gas effectively slows the descent of the coronal rain."

Dick Fisher, the head of NASA's Heliophysics Division in Washington DC, has been working in solar physics for nearly forty years. "In all that time," he says, "I've never seen images like this."

"I wonder, what will next week bring?"

Astronomers have seen eruptions like this before, but rarely so large and never in such fluid detail. As science team member Alan Title of Lockheed Martin pointed out at last week's press conference, "no other telescope comes close to the combined spatial, temporal and spectral resolution of SDO."

Schrijver says his favorite part of the movie is the coronal rain. "Blobs of plasma are falling back to the surface of the sun, making bright splashes where they hit," he explains. "This is a phenomenon I've been studying for years."

Coronal rain has long been a mystery. It's not surprising that plasma should fall back to the sun. After all, the sun's gravity is powerful. The puzzle of coronal rain is how slowly it seems to fall. "The sun's gravity should be pulling the material down much faster than it actually moves. What's slowing the descent?" he wonders.

For the first time, SDO provides an answer.

"The rain appears to be buoyed by a 'cushion' of hot gas," says Schrijver. "Previous observatories couldn't see it, but it is there."

Credit: SDO/AIA

Cosimo · 29 Apr 2010 at 10:06

The Extreme-ultraviolet Variability Experiment (EVE) on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) maps the radiation environment as it climbs to its mission orbit.

The music isn’t boring.

LittleSDOHMI — 28 April 2010:

1) The Earth's Magnetic Field
The Earth's magnetic field is quite complicated, especially due to interaction with the Sun. This magnetic field traps charged particles and forms the Van Allen Belts.

In this video, we ignore all the complications of the field and treat it as an off-center tilted bar magnet (as a dipole). We define a coordinate system which is centered on the dipole and aligned with its axis. We arbitrarily select one meridian plane as a reference, like the Prime Meridian. It doesn't matter which plane we use, because the dipole model of the magnetic is symmetrical about the dipole axis. We presume that the radiation belts share this symmetry.

2) SDO and EVE in geosynchronous transfer orbit
The SDO spacecraft was launched into a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) on 11 Feb 2010. This orbit has a low point well inside the inner radiation belt and a high point near the outer edge of the outer belt, and so is a good sampling orbit.

On board SDO, the EVE instrument electronics were activated on 18 Feb 2010 at 15:59UTC. Most of the instrument is still awaiting activation, but one science channel, the MEGS-Photometer, was activated with the instrument electronics. While this channel is an ultraviolet instrument, not a radiation instrument, it is affected by radiation. We can use it as a simple radiation couner.

3) Mapping the radiation belts
EVE sends down one measurement every 10 seconds. Down here at the EVE Science Operations Center, we use that data to construct a 1-minute average measurement. We can then plot that measurement as color, as can be seen here.

We presume that the radiation is symmetrical in a ring around the magnetic field axis, so every point we measure on the orbit is actually a measurement of a whole ring. We represent that by coloring the whole ring the same color as our measurement on the orbit.

4) Radiation in the dipole frame
In order to see the belts more clearly, we can look from the dipole frame. We pick an arbitrary meridian plane in that frame to plot against. Then, for every instant, we look at the distance that the spacecraft is away from the axis and above the equatorial plane, and plot a point on the meridian plane. In other words, we color the spot on the plane where each measurement ring intersects the plane, the same color as the ring.

The display in the lower right corner is the same meridian plane, just frozen in space so that we can see it all the time.

Early in the SDO mission, the GTO period is near 12 hours, almost exactly twice around each day. Since the magnetic field is tilted relative to the Earth's rotation, we see two loops in the plot, as the magnetic field tilts back and forth.

As the orbit continues to be raised, different parts of the belts are mapped out.

The inner radiation belt can be seen quite clearly as the red, yellow, and green areas close to the Earth. The outer belt is visible also as a blue and purple area. As seen by the EVE instrument, the inner belt is a couple of hundred times more intense than the outer belt. This is due more to the design of the EVE instrument than any actual difference in intensity. The two radiation belts have different kinds of radiation, and EVE is much more sensitive to the kind in the inner belt.

5) Visualizing the belts in 3D
We can visualize the belts in 3D as well. Remember that each point on the meridian plane represents a ring around the magnetic axis. We can draw and color all of these rings simultaneously to see the Van Allen belts. Note that the belts appear to wobble back and forth as they follow the magnetic field.

Credits: The SDO mission is managed by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. The EVE instrument was built, is controlled, and data analyzed, by the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. Tom Woods is the principal investigator for the EVE instrument. Visualization by Chris Jeppesen.

SourChipmunk · 2 May 2010 at 19:10

simulatorman said:
The music isn’t boring.

It had been a wonderful evening and what I needed now, to give it the perfect ending, was a little of the Ludwig Van.

Cosimo · 10 May 2010 at 19:34

Just arrived, concentrate it's not very long:

From: LittleSDOHMI - 10 May 2010:

The eruption here is registered as a C2.4. Plasma plumes accelerating out of the blast site are filled with magnetized gas hotter than 80,000 K and are big enough to swallow Earth itself. Earth was not, however, in the line of fire, so we will feel no geomagnetic effects from these events

Cosimo · 19 May 2010 at 09:38

The two month testing phase is now complete and the team who designed, built and tested the satellite have now handed it over to the scientists who will begin collecting data:

ESA Euronews Space Magazine’s “Our Sun” issue:

Cosimo · 20 May 2010 at 09:26

Here Comes The Sun, have a listen and don't bored it’s another good documentary:

Marine Iguana · 20 May 2010 at 09:35

I like this image that it took very nice its a bit big so may need a resize

The Shuttle and ISS crossing the sun just awesome

Cosimo · 12 Jun 2010 at 10:01

Hot off the press:

LittleSDOHMI — 11 June 2010 — The close-up view of waving, dynamic loops above two active regions on the Sun reveal the magnetic struggle occurring near the surface over a two-day period (June 6-7, 2010). As seen here in extreme UV light, charged particles spiral along these magnetic loops that arc out above and back into the surface. The emission from these particles is what creates the light that appears in the image and reveals the magnetic field lines. If viewed in visible light, larger active regions (like the lower one) appear as darker sunspots because they are somewhat cooler than the surrounding solar surface. It looks like the two active regions do generate some magnetic interactions with each other as well.

LittleSDOHMI — 11 June 2010 — The movie shows the magnetic field at and around a sunspot observed by HMI, from 22:12 to 14:36, March 28 UT.

This period was soon after the door opening first light day (March 24), and the sunspot is the first big one observed by HMI.

The 3-component vector data are retrieved from the HMI data through several processes in JSOC's HMI-data pipeline, one of which is developed by the team at HAO.

Blue and red false colors are, respectively, for positive (toward us) and negative (away from us) line-of-sight component of the magnetic field on the solar photosphere (or solar surface).

The dark brown lines show the 3-component magnetic field line, with length showing the field strength.

The HMI will continuously observe the Sun, enabling us determine such 3-component magnetic field at any point on the solar disk at any time of our interest.

Cosimo · 15 Jul 2010 at 16:11

Two new videos have been released today:

NASA SDO AIA - The Sun on April 8, 2010

A nice combo movie from the AIA instrument on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).

NASA SDO - HMI and AIA combo

The yellow image shows the 171 Angstrom wavelength, which corresponds to the Sun's corona at about 1 million degrees, and the black and white magnetogram image shows the magnetic field. (These are now available on the SDO web site every day.) Black is where the magnetic field is pointing towards the Sun, and white is where the magnetic field is pointing away from the Sun. The magnetic field is created in the interior, and when the field emerges it can form sunspots. However, most of the Sun is covered by tiny magnetic field elements, which connect to the "quiet" features seen in the coronal image.

Cosimo · 21 Jul 2010 at 10:10

SDO continues to amaze:

NASA SDO AIA - July 20, 2010 Flare

Repeated activation of a filament in what looks like a decayed, dispersed small active region. One of the activations is associated with a flare, with post-eruption arcade. The corona SE of the region appears to dim and/or change thermal structure for a considerable time after the eruption.

Credit: NASA SDO / Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company AIA

Kazz · 21 Jul 2010 at 10:55

simulatorman said:
SDO continues to amaze:

NASA SDO AIA - July 20, 2010 Flare

Wow, now that would make a nice wallpaper

.

EDIT: Aww, all the pics I can find are too small

Cosimo · 27 Jul 2010 at 10:24

A new video:

NASA SDO - The Sun on July 11, 2010

First seen July 10 2010, this is NOAA active region 11087. It remains in the hemisphere it formed in, in this case the northern hemisphere, which is typical of active regions.

Credit: NASA SDO / Lockheed Martin Space System Company, Benji Friedman

Cosimo · 31 Jul 2010 at 12:09

Some more interesting views of the sun:

The Sun July 26 - 29, 2010

Four days, each day a different view.

July 26: NASA SDO AIA 171
July 27: NASA SDO AIA 193
July 28: NASA SDO AIA 304
July 30: NASA SDO HMI

Dancing Filament Eruptions (7/28 & 7/29/2010)

Two beautiful filament eruptions

EVE

In addition to generating spectra, EVE has a small x-ray image called SAM. Here is a movie showing the Sun over the last month as SAM sees it.

Credits: NASA SDO, Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Stanford University

int · 31 Jul 2010 at 12:22

I'm sure this gets asked all the time, but what is that website which allows you to see all of the satellites currently orbiting the earth?

Cosimo · 31 Jul 2010 at 12:49

int said:
I'm sure this gets asked all the time, but what is that website which allows you to see all of the satellites currently orbiting the earth?

I use:

http://www.n2yo.com/?s=23175
http://science.nasa.gov/realtime/
http://www.spaceweather.com/flybys/

Cosimo · 3 Aug 2010 at 13:40

We may be doomed then again not.

2010 August 1 SDO/AIA 304-Angstrom view of X-ray flare and filament eruption

At approximately 0855 UTC on August 1, 2010, a C3.2 magnitude soft X-ray flare erupted from NOAA Active Sunspot Region 11092 (1092). Latest updates on website: http://prop.hfradio.org/

At nearly the same time, a massive filament eruption occurred. Prior to the filament's eruption, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) AIA instruments revealed an enormous plasma filament stretching across the sun's northern hemisphere. When the solar shock wave triggered by the C3.2-class X-ray explosion plowed through this filament, it caused the filament to erupt, sending out a huge plasma cloud.

In this movie, taken by SDO AIA at the 304-Angstrom wavelength, a cooler shock wave can be seen emerging from the origin of the X-ray flare and sweeping across the sun's northern hemisphere into the filament field. The impact of this shock wave may well have propelled the filament into space.

This movie seems to support this analysis: Despite the approximately 400,000 kilometer distance between the flare and the filament eruption, they appear to erupt together. How can this be? Most likely they're connected by long-range magnetic fields (remember: we cannot see these magnetic field lines unless there is plasma riding these fields).

NOTE: The energy that will likely be transferred by the plasma mass that was ejected by the two eruptions (first, the slower-moving coronal mass ejection originating in the C-class X-ray flare at sunspot region 1092, and, second, the faster-moving plasma ejection originating in the filament eruption) is at most "moderate". This event was rather low in energy. It will not result in any news-worth events on Earth (no laptops will be fried, no power grids will fail).

This is an amazing event, though. A complex series of eruptions involving most of the visible surface of the sun has occurred, ejecting plasma toward the Earth. This coronal mass ejection (CME) rides the solar wind. Depending on the speed of the solar wind and the ejected plasma, this cloud will reach Earth's magnetosphere sometime between August 3 and August 5. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras. Radio communications by way of the ionosphere may become degraded soon after the CME arrives, and the degraded conditions may last for up to three days.

A coronal wave and filament eruption August 1-2, 2010 (SDO/AIA 171)

A coronal wave starting at 2023 UTC on August 1, 2010 and ending 0202 UTC on August 2, 2010. This movie captures the event at the 171-Angstrom wavelength by SDO AIA. This wave occurs at about the same time as the second filament eruption. The filament eruption is stunning, but watch the ripple of the coronal wave moving northwesterly toward the sun's northern pole. (Remember, west is on our right, while east is on our left, as we view the solar disc).

NOTE: The energy that will likely be transferred by the plasma mass that was ejected by the two eruptions (first, the slower-moving coronal mass ejection originating in the C-class X-ray flare at sunspot region 1092, and, second, the faster-moving plasma ejection originating in the filament eruption) is at most "moderate". This event was rather low in energy. It will not result in any news-worth events on Earth (no laptops will be fried, no power grids will fail).

Cosimo · 4 Aug 2010 at 23:27

Two more videos of the coronal mass ejection have been released:

NASA SDO - Coronal Mass Ejection on August 1, 2010

The AIA instrument on SDO recorded the coronal mass ejection (CME) that occurred on Sunday August 1, 2010. Predictions are that the particles from this CME will reach Earth's magnetosphere today, so look to the north tonight to and you may see aurora.

NASA STEREO - August 1, 2010 CME

One of the fastest CMEs in years was captured by the STEREO COR1 telescopes on Aug. 1, 2010. This movie combines COR1-Ahead images with Helium II 304 Angstrom images from the STEREO EUVI telescope. It shows the rapid explosion of material outward, followed by a slower eruption of a polar crown prominence from another part of the sun. This CME headed toward Earth at speeds above 620 miles per sec.

Cosimo · 6 Aug 2010 at 09:18

Yet another amazing vdeo:

NASA SDO - August 3 SpraySurge & August 4

August 3, 2010 - Spray Surge (observation time: 1 hour 37 minutes)
In this short clip least some of the ejecta is seen to retract or drain back toward the spot.

August 4, 2010 - Filament Activation (observation time: 4 hours 3 minutes)
Overlaid of the 304 channel (yellow) over the line-of-sight magnetogram from HMI (green and red indicated negative and positive polarities, respectively) shows a filament roughly above the polarity inversion line. This filament undergoes some activations (i.e. brightenings).171 is shown in blue.

Credit: NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory, Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Stanford University

Cosimo · 12 Aug 2010 at 09:18

Yet another amazing video of our sun:

The Sun 2 Weeks With SDO/AIA (July 25 - August 7, 2010)

www.thesuntoday.org - Here is a 2 week view of the sun as observed by the AIA (Atmospheric Imaging Assembly) instrument aboard the SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory) spacecraft. This video contains 4 wavelength channels, 304, 171, 193 and 211. First all four wavelengths are shown simultaneously then each one separately. It has been a fairly busy 2 weeks even though the solar activity is not high.

The first period of note is August 1 with 2 filament eruptions, a C flare, EUV wave and 2 CMEs. The first CME from the active region produced Aurora. The second is on August 7 when a M-class flare, EUV wave and CME occurred. In addition to these 2 times there is always something happening if you look around the sun. Because of some data and formatting problems, there is no data on July 30 and 31 and the intensity scaling on August 1 is different than the rest of the 2 weeks

Credit: sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov

Cosimo · 16 Aug 2010 at 09:09

One more amazing video to show the full extent of the coronal mass ejection, this time from SOHO:

NASA / ESA SOHO - CME HALO

SOHO captured this video clip of a full halo coronal mass ejection (CME) that blasted a substantial cloud of particles away from the Sun (Aug, 7, 2010). The majority of the cloud went to the left with only a smaller portion heading to the right, suggesting that it would not likely have any strong impact on Earth. A "halo" cloud is one that appears to surround the Sun on all sides as it expands, meaning it is heading somewhat towards Earth or away from it. The still and movie are generated by processing the changes from one frame to the next to highlight those changes, thus, we call this a "difference movie."