"On April 21, 2010, NASA released the first-light images from its newest sun-monitoring mission, the Solar Dynamics Observatory. The mission’s high-speed, IMAX-quality photography will improve predictions of solar activity that can disrupt everything from GPS satellites to high-voltage power lines.
This image was captured by the new observatory’s Atmospheric Imaging Assembly on March 30, 2010. The sensor views the lower atmosphere of the Sun in ultraviolet wavelengths, and it captured this view as a massive plume of dense, cool (only compared to the rest of the solar atmosphere) plasma erupted on the Sun’s surface. The plasma flows in a loop along a magnetic field line.
When these ribbons of plasma appear against the black backdrop of space, as in this image, they appear bright, and they are called solar prominences. Compared to the size and mass of the Sun, the prominence seems insubstantial. But a small white circle at the lower left corner of the image dispels the misperception: ten Earths could be stacked in a line between the Sun and the top of the loop."
The video shows a 50 min event. Here is an example of the raw images SDO makes.
1 comment:
Ah, it's a fifty minute event. I was thinking the plasma must be moving ridiculously fast if it was real time.
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