*** The Official Astronomy & Universe Thread ***

Five years of our Sun:


The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) celebrates its 5th anniversary since it launched on February 11, 2010. This time-lapse video captures one frame every 8 hours starting when data became available in June 2010 and finishing February 8, 2015. The different colors represent the various wavelengths (sometimes blended, sometimes alone) in which SDO observes the sun.
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Stunning video of the Sun:


February 11, 2015 marks five years in space for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which provides incredibly detailed images of the whole sun 24 hours a day. Capturing an image more than once per second, SDO has provided an unprecedentedly clear picture of how massive explosions on the sun grow and erupt ever since its launch on Feb. 11, 2010. The imagery is also captivating, allowing one to watch the constant ballet of solar material through the sun's atmosphere, the corona.

In honor of SDO's fifth anniversary, NASA has released a video showcasing highlights from the last five years of sun watching. Watch the movie to see giant clouds of solar material hurled out into space, the dance of giant loops hovering in the corona, and huge sunspots growing and shrinking on the sun's surface.

The imagery is an example of the kind of data that SDO provides to scientists. By watching the sun in different wavelengths – and therefore different temperatures – scientists can watch how material courses through the corona, which holds clues to what causes eruptions on the sun, what heats the sun's atmosphere up to 1,000 times hotter than its surface, and why the sun's magnetic fields are constantly on the move.

Five years into its mission, SDO continues to send back tantalizing imagery to incite scientists' curiosity. For example, in late 2014, SDO captured imagery of the largest sun spots seen since 1995 as well as a torrent of intense solar flares. Solar flares are bursts of light, energy and X-rays. They can occur by themselves or can be accompanied by what's called a coronal mass ejection, or CME, in which a giant cloud of solar material erupts off the sun, achieves escape velocity and heads off into space. In this case, the sun produced only flares and no CMEs, which, while not unheard of, is somewhat unusual for flares of that size. Scientists are looking at that data now to see if they can determine what circumstances might have led to flares eruptions alone.

Goddard built, operates and manages the SDO spacecraft for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C. SDO is the first mission of NASA's Living with a Star Program. The program's goal is to develop the scientific understanding necessary to address those aspects of the sun-Earth system that directly affect our lives and society.
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Going back to February 1997, when the Near Infrared Camera, Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) replaced the Faint Object Spectrograph (FOS) and the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS) respectively.

 
Xein said:
Never new Brian Cox was part of a podcast, subscribed to that now, got lots of catching up to do with it :D
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The podcast is Joe Rogan's. That's Brian's first appearance on it, hopefully he does another. Joe did one with Neil degrasse Tyson a while back too.

Brian has his own podcast on BBC Radio 4 I with Robin Ince called Infinite Monkey Cage.

Good to know Stargazing Live is back again this year.
 
Any of you heard of the international celestial names registry? I thought about naming a star for my SO and need to know if this is real or what? Sorry if off-topic but some of you seem to know a lot more about stars than I do :)
 
Groowie said:
Any of you heard of the international celestial names registry? I thought about naming a star for my SO and need to know if this is real or what? Sorry if off-topic but some of you seem to know a lot more about stars than I do :)
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There is only one official star naming body and that is the International Astronomical Union (IAU). It names stars by numbers and that is all there is to it.

http://www.iau.org/

All these naming companies keep their own registers which are just for themselves and the people who "buy" names. They are all unofficial:

https://www.iau.org/public/themes/buying_star_names/#

Buying a name is just expensive fun and meaningless in the real world of astronomy.

http://www.nameastarnasa.com/
https://cumbriansky.wordpress.com/2010/10/30/two-things-not-to-buy-for-christmas/

So don't waste your money on these schemes. You are better off buying your son a telescope, binoculars or a book on the solar system to get him interested in the subject.
 
Cosimo said:
There is only one official star naming body and that is the International Astronomical Union (IAU). It names stars by numbers and that is all there is to it.

http://www.iau.org/

All these naming companies keep their own registers which are just for themselves and the people who "buy" names. They are all unofficial:

https://www.iau.org/public/themes/buying_star_names/#

Buying a name is just expensive fun and meaningless in the real world of astronomy.

http://www.nameastarnasa.com/
https://cumbriansky.wordpress.com/2010/10/30/two-things-not-to-buy-for-christmas/

So don't waste your money on these schemes. You are better off buying your son a telescope, binoculars or a book on the solar system to get him interested in the subject.
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Thanks a lot for the fast response!
 
Ayahuasca said:
The podcast is Joe Rogan's. That's Brian's first appearance on it, hopefully he does another. Joe did one with Neil degrasse Tyson a while back too.

Brian has his own podcast on BBC Radio 4 I with Robin Ince called Infinite Monkey Cage.

Good to know Stargazing Live is back again this year.
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That's the one I meant :p sorry for my confusing post.
 
I was walking nearly due East down a road about midnight last night in Manchester and I happened to be looking vaguely up at the sky, suddenly I saw a very bright thick line which I assume to be a meteorite? Was incredibly impressive, nothing like what I've seen before - especially considering I was in the middle of the city stars are hard to make out with the eye.

Was there any meteorite shower in the area last night? Cheers :)
 
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