Make a wish! Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory have identified new “birthday candle” structures in the Sun’s super-hot corona that may shed some light on the way its magnetic fields evolve — especially near the edges of vast, dark, wind-spewing coronal holes.
Category: sun
A Solar “Danse Macabre”
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured a video on March 27 – 28 showing two large areas of “dark” plasma on the Sun’s limb, twisting and spiraling in our star’s complex magnetic field. The southern region bears an uncanny resemblance to three figures swaying to some spooky, unheard music… a real “danse macabre” on the Sun! Watch the…
Sun, Moon and Spots
The Moon snuck in front of the Sun this morning from the perspective of NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (Little SDO), sliding past the sunspots of active region 1422. For a sense of scale, those sunspots are easily several times larger than Earth! Read the rest of the story here. And check out a video of the…
A Growing Sunspot: AR1416
This animation, made from images taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, shows active region 1416 as it rotated into view over the past week, doubling in size as it approached the center of the Sun’s disk. According to SpaceWeather.com’s Dr. Tony Phillips, AR1416 is magnetically charged in such a way as to be ready to…
Time For Some Stormy Solar Weather!
Any lapse in solar activity we may have seen during this period of “solar maximum” came to an end this weekend with some very energetic flares and CMEs, including the one seen above: an M8.7-class flare spotted by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) at 3:49 UT this morning. This comes just 4 days after a…
Comet Lovejoy’s Dazzling Death Dive
The end is definitely near… for comet Lovejoy, at least. The bright sungrazing comet was discovered on December 2, 2011, by Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy using a ground-based telescope. It was quickly seen that the comet was on a doomsday dive toward the Sun and will not likely survive its close pass of our…
Black Friday’s Solar Eclipse
While many in the U.S. will be recovering from Thanksgiving day meals and looking for ways to stretch their holiday shopping dollars at (hopefully local) retailers’ “Black Friday” sales, the face of the Sun will grow dark as the Moon casts its shadow over the Earth. But it won’t be visible to American shoppers – or…
Solar Nirvana
Hot off the presses, here’s a stunning full-disc solar photo by the inimitable Alan Friedman, taken on November 6, 2011 from his location in Buffalo, NY. Absolutely gorgeous! The enormous sunspot region AR 1339 can be seen just right of the center of the Sun. It’s nearly 17 times wider than Earth! Hydrogen alpha (Ha)…
One “Big Blemish” – AR 1339
Another fantastic image by Alan Friedman, this shows the massive sunspot region AR 1339 as it appeared on November 5, 2011 while in the process of rotating into view – and aim! – of Earth. Estimated at about 17 times the width of Earth, AR 1339 contains some gigantic sunspots capable of producing high-powered solar…
A Tall Tale of a Prominent Figure
Taken on July 29, 2010, this hydrogen-alpha-light photo by Alan Friedman shows a delicate, wispy solar prominence stretching more than 200,000 miles from the Sun’s limb… nearly as far as the distance from Earth to the Moon! This photo was taken with Alan’s backyard telescope from his location in Buffalo, NY. Many of his solar photos…
Can Comets Cause CMEs?
First, watch this sequence: What is it? It’s an animation made from images taken by ESA’s SOHO solar observatory showing a comet diving into the Sun on October 1, and then a large CME (coronal mass ejection) erupting immediately thereafter. Now, typically science has said that there is no connection between comets impacting the Sun…
A Splash of Sun
A large solar flare erupted from the Sun on September 7, 2011 and resulted in a coronal mass ejection (CME) and impressive display of magnetic activity, seen here in a video made from data from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory’s AIA 304 imaging assembly. Spanning the course of about three hours over the 7th and 8th…
Lights in the Dark 