Over the past year, the Sun has gone from one of quietest periods in decades to the ramping up of activity marking the beginning of Solar Cycle 24. And with impeccable timing, the Solar Dynamics Observatory has been there, in orbit, capturing every moment with a level of detail never-before possible. The mission has returned unprecedented images of solar flares, eruptions of prominences, and the early stages of coronal mass ejections (CMEs). It was on April 21st, 2010 that the SDO scientists were able to reveal the first images from their fledgling satellite, and now, one year on, who has not loved the intricate details of old Sol that we’ve been able to see in the imagery and video SDO has provided!
This video shows some of the most beautiful and compelling solar events seen by SDO so far, and at the SDO website, you can vote for your favorite. The contest runs through Thursday May 5, 2011. Check back on May 6 to see which video the public selected as their all-time favorite SDO video from the past year.
The largest solar flare recorded in nearly five years was triggered by interactions between five rotating sunspots, say researchers who studied observations of the flaring region of the Sun taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory over a period of five days. The flare occurred at 1.44am on February 15,2011, when the Sun released the largest recorded solar flare since December 2006 and the first flare of the current solar cycle to be classified as the most powerful “X-class”. Continue reading “Interacting Sunspots Spawn Gigantic Solar Flare”
In keeping with global astronomy month, it’s time to get out and enjoy another favorite astronomical target – the Sun! It’s a star that can be seen from both hemispheres and a great way to involve your friends, neighbors and family in the pleasure of observing. What’s more… there’s activity going on right now, too!
If you’re lucky enough to have an h-alpha filtered telescope, it’s a great time to set up your equipment and catch a host of solar prominences, flares and plague activity. Just check out this image below taken by John Chumack and done with a Lunt 60mm/50F H-Alpha dedicated solar telescope and B1200 blocking filter.
These images were taken recently, and to make the current solar action even easier to see, John colorized the next in blue!
Don’t have h-alpha? No problem. The white light view is awesome! On the west limb is exiting sunspot 1186 and hot on its heels is the more compact and darker 1190. At center stage is prominent 1191 and to its northeast is 1193.
If you don’t have either an h-alpha solar scope, or a proper white light solar filter, you can still observe the Sun with simple equipment! Got binoculars or a small refractor telescope? Then you’ve got the basis for a great projection set up! Safely cover one side of your binoculars or telescope’s finderscope and aim towards the Sun by aligning the shadow. Project the light onto a surface such as a paper plate or piece of cardboard and adjust the focus until you see a clear circle of light and focus the sunspots. The projection method is used by several famous solar telescopes, including Mt. Wilson Solar Observatory! Always remember… never look into the optics while aimed at the Sun and that your optics will get hot during use.
No telescope or binoculars? Then let’s keep trying… this time the pinhole camera method! Get two pieces of cardboard – one will need to be white or have white paper attached to it for the screen. Cut a small square in the other piece of cardboard, and tape aluminum foil over the square. Now make a pinhole in the middle of the foil. This is your “projector”. With the Sun behind you, hold the pinhole projector as far away from the screen as you can and see if you can catch some dark patches on your projected circle that indicate sunspots!
For a lot of other great projects and ideas on how you can celebrate Sun Day, be sure to visit Astronomers Without Borders Sun Day pages. Now, get on out there and enjoy Sun Day!
H-Alpha images are courtesy of John Chumack of Galactic Images, the white light solar images is courtesy of SDO/HMI and many thanks to Astrononomers Without Borders for the Sun Day logo!
Based on results from the first year of the Kepler mission, researchers have learned a way to distinguish two different groups of red giant stars: the giants, and the truly giant giants. The findings appear this week in Nature.
Red giants, having exhausted the supply of hydrogen in their cores, burn hydrogen in a surrounding shell. Once a red giant is sufficiently evolved, the helium in the core also undergoes fusion. Until now, the very different stages looked roughly the same.
Lead author Timothy Bedding, from the University of Sydney in Australia, and his colleagues used high-precision photometry obtained by the Kepler spacecraft over
more than a year to measure oscillations in several hundred red giants.
Using a technique called asteroseismology, the researchers were able to place the stars into two clear groups, “allowing us to distinguish unambiguously between hydrogen-shell-burning stars (period spacing mostly 50 seconds) and those that are also burning helium (period spacing 100 to 300 seconds),” they write. The latter population lend to the star an oscillation pattern dominated by gravity-mode period spacings.
In a related News and Views article, Travis Metcalfe of the Boulder, Colo.-based National Center for Atmospheric Research explains that like the sun, “the surface of a red giant seems to boil as convection brings heat up from the interior and radiates it into the coldness of outer space. These turbulent motions act like continuous starquakes, creating sound waves that travel down through the interior and back to the surface.” Some of the sounds, he writes, have just the right tone — a million times lower than what people can hear — to set up standing waves known as oscillations that cause the entire star to change its brightness regularly over hours and days, depending on its size. Asteroseismology is a method to measure those oscillations.
Metcalfe goes on to explain that a red giant’s life story depends not only on its age but also on its mass, with stars smaller than about twice the mass of the sun undergoing a sudden ignition called a helium flash.
“In more massive stars, the transition to helium core burning is gradual, so the stars exhibit a wider range of core sizes and never experience a helium flash. Bedding and colleagues show how these two populations can be distinguished observationally using their oscillation modes, providing new data to validate a previously untested prediction of stellar evolution theory,” he writes.
The study authors conclude that their new measurement of gravity-mode period spacings “is an extremely reliable parameter for distinguishing between stars in these two evolutionary stages, which are known to have very different core densities but are otherwise very similar in their fundamental properties (mass, luminosity and radius). We note that other asteroseismic observables, such as the small p-mode separations, are not able to do this.”
The International Space Station and a just-undocked space shuttle Discovery transit the surface of the Sun, appearing near an active spot region, 1166. Credit: Catalin Fus
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Amateur astronomer Catalin Fus from Poland has captured one of the most amazing images I’ve ever seen – and his timing was impeccable. On March 7th at 13:05:49 UTC, just after space shuttle Discovery had undocked from the International Space Station, the two ships flew in formation directly in front of the Sun, as seen from Fus’ location just outside of Krakow. With his solar-filtered telescope focused on active sunspot region 1166, he found there were a couple extra spots in his image – Discovery and the ISS. Given that this was Discovery’s final mission in space and final visit to the ISS, this image has historical significance, as well as just being absolutely fantastic. Keep in mind that transits like this last just over a half a second.
He used the following equipment:
Telescope : 102mm f6.3 GPU oilspaced apochromat
self-made Herschel Prism + Meade TeleXtender 2x 1.25”
Mount: Losmandy G11
Camera: Canon EOS 550D
1frame @ ISO 100, 1/1000s
With just a touch of post processing done in PixInsight and PS CS5
Cropped version of the ISS/Discovery/sunspont conjunction. Credit: Catalin Fus. Used by permission.
You can see more Fus’ handiwork at his website, www.catalinfus.ro. Our thanks to Catalin for allowing Universe Today to post his incredible image.
For many of us, this is the first break in the weather we’ve seen for quite some time. Of course, when opportunity knocks, you’ve got to be there to open the door… and today John Chumack took the opportunity to point his Baader solar filter film equipped 10″ SCT and Canon Rebel camera the Sun’s way…
If you’ve had the opportunity to follow solar activity, you’ve seen some major sunspots come and go over the last couple of weeks. Now the next bad boy in line is 1164. Just take a look at its progression in this movie from SDO/HMI. Growing sunspot 1164 has a complex “beta-gamma” magnetic field that harbors energy for M-class solar flares. Not just an off chance, either… but a 35% chance over the next two days. But that’s not all that’s going on!
According to Spaceweather.com “A solar wind stream hit Earth’s magnetic field during the early hours of March 1st. The impact sparked a geomagnetic storm that was, at first, minor, but the storm has been intensifying throughout the day. Spotters are now reporting auroras over Northern Ireland, Latvia, Norway, and Sweden. If trends continue, the display could spread to the high latitudes of North America after nightfall. ”
So how do you see aurora? Like John, you’ve got to be there when opportunity knocks! Be outside around nightfall and keep watch loosely to the north. Aurora can appear like distant search lights, reddish clouds or even ghostly green patches of mist. They appear and disappear… Somtimes you can see stars through them and sometimes the aurora is bright enough to block the starlight. Depending on where the auroral oval is at, you can see them to the north, north-east or north-west. There have even been times when the oval has shifted enough that they appear to the south!
Active region 1158 let loose with an X2.2 flare late on February 15, taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory in the extreme ultraviolet wavelength of 193 Angstroms. Much of the vertical line in the image is caused by the bright flash overwhelming the SDO imager. Credit: NASA/SDO
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, [and the Stardust flyby of Comet Tempel 1] the Sun erupted with a massive X-Class flare, the most powerful of all solar events on February 14 at 8:56 p.m. EST . This was the first X-Class flare in Solar Cycle 24 and the most powerful X-ray flare in more than four years.
The video above shows the flare as imaged by the AIA instrument at 304 Angstroms on NASA’sSolar Dynamics Observatory. More graphic videos below show the flare in the extreme ultraviolet wavelength of 193 Angstroms and as a composite with SOHO’s coronagraph.
Spaceweather Update: A CME hit Earth’s magnetic field at approximately 0100 UT on Feb. 18th (8:00 pm EST on Feb. 17th). Send me or comment your aurora photos
The eruption registered X2 on the Richter scale of solar flares and originated from Active Region 1138 in the sun’s southern hemisphere. The flare directly follows several M-class and C-class flares over the past few days which were less powerful. The explosion also let loose a coronal mass ejection (CME) headed for Earth’s orbit. It was speeding at about 900 Km/second.
CME’s can disrupt communications systems and the electrical power grid and cause long lasting radiation storms.
According to a new SDO update, the particle cloud from this solar storm is weaker than first expected and may produce some beautiful aurora in the high northern and southern latitudes on Feb. 17 (tonight).
According to spaceweather.com, skywatchers in the high latitudes should be alert for auroras after nightfall Feb. 17 from this moderately strong geomagnetic storm.
Send me your aurora reports and photos to post here
Sources: SDO website, spaceweather.com
NASA SDO – Big, Bright Flare February 15, 2011
Video Caption: Active region 1158 let loose with an X2.2 flare at 0153 UT or 8:50 pm ET on February 15, 2011, the largest flare since Dec. 2006 and the biggest flare so far in Solar Cycle 24. Active Region 1158 is in the southern hemisphere, which has been lagging the north in activity but now leads in big flares! The movie shows a close-up of the flaring region taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory in the extreme ultraviolet wavelength of 193 Angstroms. Much of the vertical line in the image and the staggered lines making an “X” are caused by the bright flash overwhelming our imager. A coronal mass ejection was also associated with the flare. The movie shows activity over about two days (Feb. 13-15, 2011). Since the active region was facing Earth, there is a good chance that Earth will receive some effects from these events, with some possibility of mid-latitude aurora Feb. 16 – 18. Credit: NASA SDO
X2 flare Video combo from SDO and SOHO
Video caption: The X2 flare of Feb. 15, 2011 seen by SDO (in extreme ultraviolet light) enlarged and superimposed on SOHO’s coronagraph that shows the faint edge of a “halo” coronal mass ejection as it races away from the Sun. The video covers about 11 hours
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This image taken by SDO's AIA instrument at 171 Angstrom shows the current conditions of the quiet corona and upper transition region of the Sun. Credit: NASA/SDO/AIA
Siding Spring Comet via WISE. credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA
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An old story got new legs this week as word went viral of a possible new 9th planet in our solar system – a gas giant bigger than Jupiter – which could be hiding somewhere in the Oort Cloud, just waiting to be found.
An article this week in The Independent suggested the new planet, called Tyche, had already been found among data from the WISE mission. This prompted the WISE team to post a rebuttal on their Facebook page: “Not true. A pair of scientists published a paper stating that if such a big planet exists in the far reaches of the Solar System, then WISE should have seen it. That is true. But, analysis over the next couple of years will be needed to determine if WISE has actually detected such a world or not.”
To make sense of this all, Universe Today sought out a scientist who has looked at the outer solar system as much as anyone, if not more: Mike Brown, of Eris, Haumea and Makemake fame – to get his take on Tyche.
“Yes,” said Brown, “this is all getting pretty funny these days!”
The story starts at least a decade ago. For years John Matese of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and colleague Daniel Whitmire have been trying to figure out why many of the comets that originate from way out in the distant-most part of our solar system — the Oort Cloud — have strange orbits that don’t jive with theories of how comets should behave. The two scientists first suggested that the gravitational influence from a dark companion to the Sun — a dim brown-dwarf or red-dwarf star — was sending comets careening towards the inner solar system. They called it Nemesis, (another thing that went viral), but the Nemesis idea has widely been refuted.
Last year, Matese and Whitmire suggested that possibly a large planet four times the mass of Jupiter in the Oort Cloud could explain why long-period comets appear to be clustered in a band inclined to the ecliptic instead of coming from random directions. (Here’s their paper.)
Then came a revival of their theory with several articles about it this week, reporting it as seemingly fact.
Could there possibly be a giant planet 500 times as distant as Neptune?
“Absolutely,” Brown said. “Many people have speculated about such possibilities for a long time. It’s an intriguing idea because, well, it would be fun, to say the least.”
But beyond fun and excitement, is there actually any evidence for it?
The layout of the solar system, including the Oort Cloud, on a logarithmic scale. Credit: NASA
“Well, the quality of the data that Matese and Whitmire have to work with is pretty crummy –no fault of their own — it’s just the historical record of where comets have come from,” Brown said in an email. “I don’t believe that anyone understands the ins and outs of the data set well enough to really draw a robust conclusion. But, Matese and Whitmire did the best they could and think the data point to something out there.”
Does Brown think there is really something out there?
“Well,” he said, “if I had to bet one way or another I’d bet no. The data don’t convince me, and there is no other hint anywhere that such a thing is real. So I’m pretty skeptical.”
That being said, however, Brown believes WISE really does have a good chance of detecting this type of object way out there – if it exists — even if the predictions have nothing to do with the real object.
“This is something that people will absolutely be looking for when the data are released,” Brown said, “and, indeed, the WISE team is undoubtedly already looking for — not because of the prediction, but simply because it’s the right way to search this unknown region of the solar system!”
So don’t worry about the International Astronomical Union having to confirm or name a new planet in our solar system, at least for now.
A M6.6 solar flare peaked at 17:38 UT on Feb. 13, 2011. This is the largest solar flare so fare from this solar cycle based on X-ray irradiance magnitude. Credit: NASA/SDO
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On February 13, 2011, sunspot 1158 let loose the strongest solar flare of the current solar cycle, a blast of radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to x-rays and gamma-rays. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded an intense flash of extreme ultraviolet radiation, as seen above, and located in approximately the middle of the Sun’s disk in the image below. The eruption also produced a loud blast of radio waves, and coronagraph data from STEREO-A and SOHO agree that the explosion produced a fast but not particularly bright coronal mass ejection. Spaceweather.com predicts a CME cloud will likely hit Earth’s magnetic field on or about Feb. 15th, and high-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras.
A M6.6-category flare on Feb. 13. Credit: NASA/SDO
Another view from SDO of the flare. Credit: NASA/SDOA look at sunspot 1158 as of Feb. 14, 2011. This is the source of the recent activity on the Sun. Credit: NASA/SDO
Jason Major from Lights in the Dark created the video below of magnetic activity around a sunspot 1158, from data region from SDO spacecraft, during February 12-13, 2011.
Latest image of the far side of the Sun based on high resolution STEREO data, taken on February 3, 2011 at 23:56 UT when there was still a small gap between the STEREO Ahead and Behind data. This gap will start to close on February 6, 2011, when the spacecraft achieve 180 degree separation, and will completely close over the next several days. Credit: NASA. Note this STEREO image was taken Feb 3. NASA today released an image taken on Feb 2. New images are taken every day
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Super Bowl SUNday XLV marks a watershed moment in observing our Sun. Today, February 6, 2011, NASA’s twin STEREO solar observatories will reach locations on exact opposite sides of the Sun, called opposition, and they are beaming back uninterrupted images from both the entire front and rear side hemispheres of Earths star in three dimensions and 360 degrees for the first time.
“For the first time in history we can see the entire Sun at one time – both the far side and the near side,” said Joe Gurman, in an interview for Universe Today. Gurman is the Project Scientist for NASA’s STEREO mission at the NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, MD. This will significant aid space weather forecasting.
To mark this historic milestone, NASA today released images captured by STEREO on Feb. 2 – slightly prior to opposition – which gives humankind our first ever global look at the whole sphere of our Suns surface and atmosphere in extreme ultraviolet light (EUV). The probes were over 179 degrees apart. See location maps and images below
This article features even newer EUV images – compared to NASA’s press release – that were taken even closer to opposition by STEREO on Feb. 3 and today on Feb. 6 and which I downloaded from the STEREO website. The newer EUV images show an ever so slightly more complete solar view as the probes orbit reaches further to the suns far side.
Coincidentally, the STEREO duo may reach opposition – exactly 180 degrees apart – while the Super Bowl XLV half time show is ongoing, at roughly 7:30 p.m. EST in the evening of Sunday, Feb. 6.
The Sun from STEREO A and B on Feb. 3, 2011.
Images taken by the SECCHI Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUVI) at the 304 Angstrom bandpass which is sensitive to the He II singly ionized state of helium, at a characteristic temperature of about 80 thousand degrees Kelvin. These are the most current images used to create the spherical solar view on Feb 3, 2011. Credit: NASA
There is a tiny sliver of unseen solar surface on the far side of the sun at the extreme fringes of the far side EUV images that will fill in over the new few days to give an even better view. As of today that wedge is less than 1 degree. See the solar image collections above and below.
“The currently unseen far side wedge will disappear around February 12,” Gurman told me. “There might still be some small areas at high latitudes we won’t be able to see, but the view from the ecliptic is always limited. It takes about 3 days to get back the high resolution data.”
“On either side of the wedge, the features are smeared out because they’re from the “limbs” (edges) of the Sun as seen from each STEREO spacecraft.”
“The far side resolution will increase as the STEREO twins proceed around the sun.”
“On the near side, we can substitute the much higher resolution SDO AIA image data along the nearside “seam”, said Gurman.
SDO is in Earth orbit on the earth-facing side of the sun and will fill in the gap.
“For the next 8 years we will have a 360 degree view of the Sun by combining STEREO and SDO data,” said Gurman. “We will have that whole sun view until the STEREO spacecraft swing back to the earth side of the Sun.”
The Sun from STEREO A and B on Feb. 6, 2011 on SuperSUNday.
The probes were nearly at opposition 180 degrees apart. These images provide the first 360 degree global view of Earths Star. Images taken by the SECCHI Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUVI) at the 195 Angstrom bandpass is sensitive to the Fe XII ionization state of iron, at a characteristic temperature of about 1.4 million degrees Kelvin. Credit: NASA
Why is it important to image the far side of the sun?
Because scientists can now immediately detect active regions on the far side of the sun which were hidden from our view up until now.
“No active region can hide from us anymore because we will now have this 360 degree view.”
The new far side data will allow much faster detection of solar storms which in turn will enable faster predictions of space weather which potentially can severely impact sensitive technological infrastructure on Earth and throughout the solar system.
Until now, we had to wait about two weeks until the rear side active regions of the sun rotated into our view on the front side. But no longer. On average the sun rotates in about 27 days – faster at the equator and slower at the poles.
“We will now be able to detect the coronal mass ejections, or CMEs as they happen on the far side instead of waiting until they rotate around with no forewarning. The magnetic storms with energetic particles blast out at varying speeds of about 700 to 1000 km/sec and can reach Earth in one to three days,” said Gurman.
These magnetic storms are a threat to air traffic control of airliners, can disrupt the power grip, damage communications systems, space satellites in Earth orbit and around the solar system, effect other sensitive electronics systems and also harm astronauts working aboard the International Space Station.
An artist's concept shows both STEREO surrounding the sun on opposite sides. Credit: NASA
STEREO is comprised of two nearly identical STEREO spacecraft – dubbed STEREO Ahead and STEREO Behind –orbiting around our Sun. One probe – B – trails Earth around the sun and moves a bit slower; the other one – A – leads the Earth traveling slightly faster.
Each probe images half of the suns sphere and broadcasts the data back to Earth continuously, 24 hours each day. STEREO’s solar telescopes are tuned to four different wavelengths of extreme ultraviolet radiation (171, 195, 284, 304 Å) selected to trace key aspects of solar activity such as flares, tsunamis and magnetic filaments.
“The images are converted into a spherical projection by researchers on the science teams,” said Gurman. An international group of scientific institutions and governments from the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and Switzerland designed and built STEREO’s science imaging and particle detecting instruments.
The two probes have been slowly separating in opposite directions at about 45 degrees per year ever since they were launched together aboard a Delta II rocket on October 25, 2006 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) in Florida.
After hurtling past the moon, the solar powered spacecraft – weighing some 600 kg – were flung into solar orbit on opposite sides of the Earth and have been moving away from Earth and apart from each other. In this way the wedge of unseen solar territory has been diminishing as the probes gain more complete coverage of the sun, thus enabling us to formulate a more complete understanding of the solar environment.
STEREO stands for Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory. Their mission is to provide the very first, 3-D “stereo” images of the sun to study the nature of coronal mass ejections.
The STEREO mission is currently funded until 2013.
“The probes have enough fuel to last 100 years,” said Gurman. “The lifetime limiting factor is the spacecraft electronics and funding. The solar arrays will only gradually degrade over decades.”
NASA/STEREO Reveals the Entire Sun
Launched in October 2006, STEREO traces the flow of energy and matter from the sun to Earth. It also provides unique and revolutionary views of the sun-Earth system. STEREO, when paired with SDO, can now give us the first complete view of the sun’s entire surface and atmosphere
On Super Bowl SUNday - Feb 6, 2011;
The two NASA STEREO spacecraft will see the entire Sun ! Super Bowl SUNday will truly mark a milestone for solar observations. On February 6, the two STEREO spacecrafts will be 180 degrees apart and for the next 8 years the STEREO spacecrafts and SDO will be able to observe the entire 360 degrees of the Sun. Credit: NASAPositions of STEREO A and B for 6-Feb-2011 17:00 UT. This figure plots the current positions of the STEREO Ahead (red) and Behind (blue) spacecraft relative to the Sun (yellow) and Earth (green). The dotted lines show the angular displacement from the Sun. Units are in A.U.
