![]() 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. Solar flares are bursts of light, energy and X-rays. 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. 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.įive years into its mission, SDO continues to send back tantalizing imagery to incite scientists' curiosity. ![]() The imagery is an example of the kind of data that SDO provides to scientists. 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. In honor of SDO's fifth anniversary, NASA has released a video showcasing highlights from the last five years of sun watching. The imagery is also captivating, allowing one to watch the constant ballet of solar material through the sun's atmosphere, the corona. ![]() 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. Ten Things We’ve Learned About the Sun From NASA’s SDO This Decadeįebrumarks five years in space for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which provides incredibly detailed images of the whole sun 24 hours a day.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. The images where the Sun is off-center were observed when SDO was calibrating its instruments. A longer blackout in 2016 was caused by a temporary issue with the AIA instrument that was successfully resolved after a week. The dark frames in the video are caused by Earth or the Moon eclipsing SDO as they pass between the spacecraft and the Sun. While SDO has kept an unblinking eye pointed towards the Sun, there have been a few moments it missed. The custom music, titled “Solar Observer,” was composed by musician Lars Leonhard. 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. Compiling one photo every hour, the movie condenses a decade of the Sun into 61 minutes. ![]() 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. The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument alone captures images every 12 seconds at 10 different wavelengths of light. With a triad of instruments, SDO captures an image of the Sun every 0.75 seconds. This information has enabled countless new discoveries about the workings of our closest star and how it influences the solar system. From its orbit in space around the Earth, SDO has gathered 425 million high-resolution images of the Sun, amassing 20,000,000 gigabytes of data over the past ten years. As of June 2020, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory SDO has now been watching the Sun non-stop for over a full decade. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |