The Sun was briefly slashed in half diagonally when Earth’s atmosphere hid it from the view of NASA’s SDO spacecraft on April 1, 2011. (No foolin’!) SDO is currently in an orbit that puts the Earth between it and the Sun momentarily each day. When this happens, SDO’s view is blocked completely for several minutes…
Tag: sun
Sun Pass
Astronomy hobbyist and solar photographer extraordinaire Alan Friedman captured a wonderful image of the International Space Station transiting the edge of the Sun’s disc during a Winter Star Party in Florida on March 1, 2011. Taken with a solar telescope that images the Sun in hydrogen alpha light, the image above clearly shows the ISS…
Detachable Prominence
Here’s the latest image of the Sun from photographer Alan Friedman, showing incredible surface detail as well as the remnants of a detached prominence that had erupted from active region 1166 on March 3, 2011. This image was taken during a Winter Star Party event in West Summerland Key, Florida. “A close-up look at the…
Active region is active.
Active region 1163-1164 kept the show going this morning, February 27 2011, with a large coronal mass ejection (CME) that erupted at around 4:30am EST from the Sun’s western limb. The animation above was made from ten high-resolution images taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, and shows this particular flare in action. (Click the image…
Flare Out
Today at 7:35 UT, hours before the final Discovery shuttle launch, the Sun had a launch of its own: an M3-class solar flare spewed a giant plume of material hundreds of thousands of miles into space. Luckily this ejection was not facing Earth at the time, but the active region responsible is gradually rotating into…
A Matter of Scale
One of the things that fascinates me so much about the Universe is the incredible vastness of scale, distance and size. On Earth we have virtually nothing to compare to the kinds of sizes seen in space. We look up at the stars and planets in the night sky but they are just bright points…
The Sun’s Still At It!
‘Tis the season…the season for solar activity, that is! Last week was just the beginning, even though it saw some of the most powerful solar flares of the past four years send charged solar particles streaming toward Earth. Luckily our magnetosphere was in such a position to absorb much of it, creating some beautiful aurora…
Firing Off Flares
Can’t see the video below? Click here. Here’s a look at the activity on the Sun that’s gotten many talking about solar storms this week. Taken with the Solar Dynamics Observatory’s AIA 335 camera channel, which is sensitive to light emitted by Iron-14 ions in the Sun’s active corona layer, this video spans about two…
A Solar Bullet
Can’t see the video below? Click here. Around 12:38 pm EST today, an energetic sunspot region on the Sun released a flare in our direction. The video above, a crop from an SDO AIA 171 mpeg, shows the shifting coronal loops surrounding sunspot 1158 as it rotates into view over the past day or so….
The Sun in STEREO
NASA’s STEREO mission – twin spacecraft orbiting the Sun, one ahead of Earth and the other behind – has reached a milestone in its mission today: both spacecraft are now in position to be able to view the entire Sun at the same time, giving scientists the ability to monitor solar activity on both sides!…
Eclipses From Orbit
Can’t see the video below? Click here to watch. In another view of Tuesday’s partial solar eclipse, the European Space Agency’s Proba-2 satellite captured this video of the Moon passing in front of the Sun from its position in low-Earth orbit. Taken in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light, best for observing details of the Sun’s corona,…
From the LITD Archives: Final Flight
Originally posted on January 6, 2010. A reminder that our solar system is a dynamic place, where gravity is the rule of the game and there’s rarely a prize for second place. On January 3, the European Space Agency’s SOHO solar observatory spacecraft captured images of a comet flying towards the Sun….and then disappearing into…
Lights in the Dark 