Posted on by David Dickinson

IRIS Glimpses an Elusive Region of the Sun

An innovative solar observatory is adding a key piece to the puzzle of the enigma that is our Sun.

Its two of key questions in heliophysics: why does our Sun have a corona? And why is the temperature of the corona actually higher than the surface of the Sun?

This week, researchers released results from the preliminary first six months of data from NASA’s Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, known as IRIS. The findings were presented at the Fall American Geophysical Union Meeting this past Monday.

IRIS was launched on June 27th of this year on a Pegasus-XL rocket deployed from the belly of a Lockheed L-1011 aircraft flying out of Vandenberg Air Force Base. IRIS can focus in on a very specific interface region of the Sun sandwiched between the dazzling solar photosphere and the transition to the corona. To accomplish this, IRIS employs an ultraviolet slit spectrograph looking at ionized gas spectra.

IRIS in the clean room. The spacecraft is only about 2 metres in length, about the height of a person. (Credit: Lockheed Martin).
IRIS in the clean room. The spacecraft is only about 2 metres in length, about the height of a person. (Credit: Lockheed Martin).

“The quality of images and spectra we are receiving is amazing,” IRIS Principal Investigator Alan Title said in a recent press release from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. While other missions may take over a decade to go from the drawing board to the launch pad, IRIS was developed and deployed into Low Earth Orbit in just 44 months.

IRIS offers scientists a new tool to probe the Sun and a complimentary instrument to platforms such as Hinode, the Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. In fact, IRIS has a better resolution than SDO’s AIA imagers or Hinode when it comes to this key solar interface region. IRIS has a 20x greater resolution in time, and 25x the spatial resolution of any former space-based UV spectrometer deployed.

“We are seeing rich and unprecedented images of violent events in which gases are accelerated to very high velocities while being rapidly heated to hundreds of thousands of degrees,” said Lockheed Martin science lead on the IRIS mission Bart De Pontieu. These observations are key to backing up theoretical models of solar dynamics as well as testing and formulating new ones of how our Sun works.

IRIS bridges this crucial gap between the photosphere and the lower chromosphere of the Sun. While the solar surface roils at relatively placid  6,000 degrees Celsius, temperatures rise into the range of 2-3 million degrees Celsius as you move up through the transition region and into the corona.

Two key solar phenomena that are of concern to solar researchers can be examined by IRIS in detail. One is the formation of prominences, which show up as long looping swirls of solar material rising up from the surface of the Sun. Prominences can be seen from backyard telescopes at hydrogen alpha wavelengths. IRIS can catch and track their early modeling with unprecedented resolution. Images released from IRIS show the fine structure of targeted prominences as they evolve and rise off the surface of the Sun. When a prominence and accompanying coronal mass ejection is launched in our direction, disruption of our local space environment caused by massive solar storm can result.

Slit jaw spectra images (the two strips to the left) and imaging a spicules 9to the right as seen by IRIS. (Credit: NASA/IRIS).
Slit jaw spectra images (the two strips to the left) and imaging of spicules (to the right) as seen by IRIS. (Credit: NASA/IRIS).

The second phenomenon targeted by IRIS is the formation of spicules, which are giant columns of gas rising from the photosphere. Although the spicules look like hair-fine structures through Earth-based solar telescopes, they can be several hundred kilometres wide and as long as the Earth. Short-lived, spicules race up from the surface of the Sun at up to 240,000 kilometres per hour and seem to play a key role in energy and heat transfer from the solar surface up through the atmosphere. IRIS is giving us a view of the evolution of spicules for the first time, and they’re proving to be even more complex than theory previously suggested.

“We see discrepancies between these observations and the models, and that is great news for advancing knowledge. By seeing something we don’t understand, we have a chance of learning something new,” Said University of Oslo astrophysicist Mats Carlsson.

Like SDO and SOHO, data and images from IRIS are free for the public to access online. Though the field of view for IRIS is a narrow 2’ to 4’ arc minutes on a side – the solar disk spans about 30’ as seen from the Earth – IRIS gives us a refined view of “where the action is.”

Where is IRIS looking? This snapshot gives some context of the IRIS field of view (green and red boxes) and black and white insets versus SDO's AIA full disk view of the Sun. (Credit: NASA/SDO/IRIS).
Where is IRIS looking? This snapshot gives some context of the IRIS field of view (green and red boxes) and black and white insets versus SDO’s AIA full disk view of the Sun. (Credit: NASA/SDO/IRIS).

And this all comes at an interesting time, as our nearest star crosses the sputtering solar maximum for Cycle #24.

The equivalent of 50 million CPU hours were utilized in constructing and modeling what IRIS sees. The reconstruction was an international effort, spanning the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe, the Norwegian supercomputing collaboration, and NASA’s Ames Research Center.

IRIS also faced the additional challenge of weathering a 2.5 week period of inactivity due to the U.S. government shutdown this fall. Potential impacts due to sequestration remain an issue, though small explorer missions such as IRIS demonstrate how we can do more with less.

“We’ve made a giant step forward in characterizing the heat transfer properties of this region between the visible surface and the corona, which is key to understanding how the outer atmosphere of the Sun exists, and is key to understanding the outer atmosphere that the Earth lies in,” said Alan Title, referring to the tenuous heliosphere of the Sun extending out through the solar system.

Understanding the inner working of our Sun is vital: no other astronomical body has as big an impact on life here on Earth.

IRIS is slated for a two-year mission, though as is the case with most space-based platforms, researchers will work to get every bit of usefulness out of the spacecraft that they can. And it’s already returning some first-rate science at a relatively low production cost. This is all knowledge that will help us as a civilization live with and understand our often tempestuous star.

 

Posted on by Elizabeth Howell

Is Comet ISON Dead? Astronomers Say It’s Likely After Icarus Sun-Grazing Stunt

Comet ISON on Nov. 10 before the recent outburst with well-developed dust (upper) and gas tails. Click ot enlarge. Credit: Damian Peach

Update, 9:55 pm EST: It’s a Thanksgiving miracle: apparently it now looks like ISON has actually survived!!

Image from SOHO indicates a chunk of Comet ISON has survived its close pass of the Sun. Credit: NASA/ESA/SOHO.
Image from SOHO indicates a chunk of Comet ISON has survived its close pass of the Sun. Credit: NASA/ESA/SOHO.

Update, 8:35 p.m. EST: Uncertainty about Comet ISON’s fate likely will persist for some time. Karl Battams just tweeted that after 2,000 sungrazing comet observations, he has never seen brightening in the same way that ISON (or its remains) appear to be doing right now. We’ll keep watching. Real-time images are available on this website.

Update, 6:30 p.m. EST: An excellent blog post from Phil Plait (who writes the Bad Astronomy blog on Slate) summarizes his take of the comet’s fate; debris (most likely, he says) continues to show up in images. An except: “It held together a long time, got very bright last night, faded this morning, then apparently fell apart. This isn’t surprising; we see comets disintegrate often enough as they round the Sun. ISON’s nucleus was only a couple of kilometers across at best, so it would have suffered under the Sun’s heat more than a bigger comet would have. Still, there’s more observing to do, and of course much data over which to pore.”

Update, 4:40 p.m. EST: On Twitter, the European Space Agency (quoting SOHO scientist Bernhard Fleck) said the comet is gone. Separately, the Naval Research Laboratory’s Karl Battams posted that he thinks recent observations show debris from ISON, but not a nucleus. Astronomers are still monitoring, however. 

Update, 3:56 p.m. EST: Something has emerged from perihelion, but the experts are divided as to whether it’s leftovers of ISON’s tail, or the comet itself. Stay tuned.

The fate of Comet C/2012 S1 ISON is uncertain. It made its closest approach to the sun today (Nov. 28) around 1:44 p.m. EST (6:44 p.m. UTC). As of Thursday night, what’s happening to the comet is still unclear, as observers try to keep up hopes for a good comet show in the next few weeks.

It will take a few more hours until NASA and other agencies can say for sure what the comet’s fate is. That said, there still is valuable science that can be performed if ISON has broken up — more details below the jump.

ISON coincided with American Thanksgiving, causing a lot of astronomers and journalists to work holiday hours while pundits made jokes about the comet being “roasted” along with the turkey. Meanwhile, amateur astronomer Stuart Atkinson — author of the Waiting for ISON blog — was among those eagerly awaiting the comet’s closest approach.

mars_stu

But as the comet made its closest approach, astronomers grew more and more skeptical than it had survived. Phil Plait (who writes the Bad Astronomy blog on Slate) pointed out that the comet’s nucleus appeared much dimmer than its tail in images from SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory), NASA’s sun-gazing spacecraft. This implied that the nucleus was disintegrating.

phil_plait

Plait and Karl Battams — a Naval Research Laboratory astrophysicist who operates the Sungrazing Comets Project — both participated in a NASA Google+ Hangout on ISON. As of about 2 p.m. EST (7 p.m. UTC), both said that they believe ISON is an “ex-comet”, although it will be a few more hours before scientists can say for sure.

The challenge is that the two spacecraft used to watch ISON swing around the sun — the Solar Dynamics Observatory and SOHO — are not necessarily designed to look for comets. Battams and Plait initially said that it sometimes take additional image processing to view information in it. more As time elapsed though, both expressed extreme skepticism that the comet survived.

Even if the comet is dead, Plait pointed out that scientists can still learn a lot from the remaining debris. ISON is believed to be a pristine example of bodies in the Oort Cloud, a vast body of small objects beyond the orbit of Neptune. Examining the dust in its debris trail could tell scientists more about the origins of the solar system.

“The fact that  it’s broken up is really cool. There’s a lot we can learn from it and a lot we can get from it,” he said.

Battams added that ISON has been a very unpredictable comet, flaring up when people expected it would fade, and vice versa. “ISON is just weird. It has behaved unpredictably at times. When it’s done something strange, we spent some time scratching our heads, figuring out what is going on and we think we know what it’s doing … it then goes and does something different.”

Amid the waiting came the inevitable social media jokes (including science fiction and fantasy references.)

kurtis_williams

 

suthers

 

ison_isoff

 

For others, the comet served as an inspiration for daring to be courageous.

peter_fries

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Solar Activity Ramps Up as Giant Sunspot Group Turns to Face Earth

Monster sunspot group 1890 now faces Earth. Taken on Nov. 8, 2013. Credit and copyright: Ron Cottrell.

The Sun is finally acting like it’s in solar maximum. Our Sun has emitted dozens of solar flares in since Oct. 23, 2013, with at least six big X-class flares. Just today it blasted out a X1.1 flare at 04:32 UT (11:32 p.m. EST on Nov. 7, 2013). While old Sol had been fairly quiet for the time where it was supposed to be active in its normal 11-year cycle, only recently has activity ramped up with increased flares and sunspots. During 2013, there has been intermittent strong activity (like this and this in May), but the activity since mid-October is really the first extended period of activity.

Speaking of sunspots, a huge group called designated as AR 1890 has turned to face Earth. Thanks to astrophotographer Ron Cottrell for capturing the group today, above. Spaceweather.com reports that this sunspot has a trend of producing very brief flares. The X1-flare today was no exception as it lasted barely a minute. NOAA is forecasting a 60% chance of M-class solar flares and a 20% chance of X-flares on Nov. 8th from this sunspot group.

You can see an image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory below, as it recorded a flash of extreme UV radiation from the blast site:

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of the sun showing an X1.1 class flare that peaked at 11:26 p.m. EST on Nov. 7, 2013. Increased numbers of flares are quite common at the moment as the sun's normal 11-year activity cycle is ramping up toward solar maximum conditions. Image Credit: NASA/SDO
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of the sun showing an X1.1 class flare that peaked at 11:26 p.m. EST on Nov. 7, 2013. Increased numbers of flares are quite common at the moment as the sun’s normal 11-year activity cycle is ramping up toward solar maximum conditions.
Image Credit: NASA/SDO

NASA describes a solar flare as such:

A flare is defined as a sudden, rapid, and intense variation in brightness. A solar flare occurs when magnetic energy that has built up in the solar atmosphere is suddenly released. Radiation is emitted across virtually the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves at the long wavelength end, through optical emission to x-rays and gamma rays at the short wavelength end. The amount of energy released is the equivalent of millions of 100-megaton hydrogen bombs exploding at the same time.

While solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation, harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth’s atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground. But when they are intense enough, they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.

You can keep track of the Sun’s activity at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center and the Solar Dynamics Observatory website.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Spectacular Halo Around the Sun Seen in Africa

A solar halo seen over Klerksdorp, South Africa. Credit: Daniël Engelbrecht

Fresh off seeing a solar eclipse on Sunday, people across the southern parts of Africa witnessed another solar spectacle today, a sun halo. “It was so beautiful, everyone was taking pictures and sharing them on Facebook,” said Daniël Engelbrecht from Klerksdorp, South Africa, sending in his picture to Universe Today via email.

These halos are quite the sight to see, but unlike an eclipse, they can’t be predicted. Conditions in the atmosphere have to be just right, with moisture or ice crystals creating a “rainbow” effect around the Sun. Sometimes the halos surround the Sun completely, other times, they appear as arcs around the Sun creating what is known as sundogs. Basically, sunlight is reflecting off moisture in the atmosphere.

Ice crystals in Earth’s atmosphere can also cause rings around the Moon, and moondogs(as well as sundogs) and even Venus pillars. News reports indicate sun halos were seen just a few days ago in Africa as well, on Nov. 1, 2013.

A few other people sent in images from their phones, too of today’s sun halo:

Image of a Sun halo seen over Botswana, Southern Africa at 11:08 am local time on Nov, 6, 2013. Taken with an iPhone. Credit: Belleminah K Chitonho.
Image of a Sun halo seen over Botswana, Southern Africa at 11:08 am local time on Nov, 6, 2013. Taken with an iPhone. Credit: Belleminah K Chitonho.
Image of a Sun halo taken at 12:10 on Nov. 6, 2013, in northwest South Africa, in Mmabotho with a blackberry phone. Credit: Vanessa Lucher.
Image of a Sun halo taken at 12:10 on Nov. 6, 2013, in northwest South Africa, in Mmabotho with a blackberry phone. Credit: Vanessa Lucher.
Posted on by Fraser Cain

How Far is Earth from the Sun?

How Far is Earth from the Sun?

It’s amazing to think that for the majority of human history, we had almost no understanding about the Sun. We didn’t know what it was made of, how it formed, or how it produced energy. We didn’t know how big it was, and we didn’t know how far away it was.

We orbit the Sun at a distance of about 150 million kilometers. This number is actually an average, since we follow an elliptical path. At its closest point, the Earth gets to 147 million km, and at its most distant point, it’s 152 million km.

Distances in the Solar System are so vast that astronomers use this distance as a standard for measurement, and so the average distance from the Earth to the Sun is called an astronomical unit. Instead of saying that Pluto is 5.87 billion kilometers away from the Sun, astronomers say that it’s 39 astronomical units, or AUs.

You might be surprised to know that the distance from the Sun to the Earth was only determined within the last few hundred years. There were just too many variables. If astronomers knew how big it was, they could figure out how far away it was, or vice versa, but both of these numbers were mysteries.

Ancient astronomers, especially the Greeks, tried estimating the distance to the Sun in several different ways: measuring the length of shadows on Earth, or comparing the size of the Moon and its orbit to the Sun. Unfortunately, their estimates were off at least by a factor of 10.

The key to figuring out the distance to the Sun came from observing Venus as it passed directly in front of the Sun. This rare event, known as a Transit of Venus, happens only twice every 108 years. Once devised, the best opportunities for taking this precise measurement came during the Venus transits of 1761 and 1769. Astronomers were dispatched to remote corners of the globe to observe the precise moment when Venus began to move in front of the Sun, and when it had moved completely across the surface.

By comparing these measurements, astronomers could use geometry to calculate exactly how far away the Sun is. Their initial calculations put the distance at 24,000 times the radius of the Earth. Not bad considering our modern measurement of 23,455 times the radius of the Earth.

Modern astronomers can use radar and laser pulses to calculate the distance to objects in the Solar System. For example, they fire an intense beam of radio waves at a distant object, like Mercury, and then calculate how long it takes for the waves to bounce off the planet and return to Earth. Since the speed of light is well known, the return travel time tells you how far away the planet is.

Astronomy has truly helped us find our place in the Universe. It nice to be living in a time when many of these big mysteries have been solved. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see what’s around the corner of the next discovery.

Posted on by Jason Major

Watch the Sun Split Apart

Canyon of Fire on the Sun, Credit: NASA/SDO/AIA)

Here’s your amazing oh-my-gosh-space-is-so-cool video of the day — a “canyon of fire” forming on the Sun after the liftoff and detachment of an enormous filament on September 29-30. A new video, created from images captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and assembled by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, shows the entire dramatic event unfolding in all its mesmerizing magnetic glory.

Watch it below:

Solarrific! (And I highly suggest full-screening it in HD.) That filament was 200,000 miles long, and the rift that formed afterwards was well over a dozen Earths wide!

Captured in various wavelengths of light by SDO’s Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) the video shows the solar schism in different layers of the Sun’s corona, which varies greatly in temperature at different altitudes.

According to the description from Karen Fox at GSFC:

“The red images shown in the movie help highlight plasma at temperatures of 90,000° F and are good for observing filaments as they form and erupt. The yellow images, showing temperatures at 1,000,000° F, are useful for observing material coursing along the sun’s magnetic field lines, seen in the movie as an arcade of loops across the area of the eruption. The browner images at the beginning of the movie show material at temperatures of 1,800,000° F, and it is here where the canyon of fire imagery is most obvious.”

Now, there’s not really any “fire” on the Sun — that’s just an illustrative term. What we’re actually seeing here is plasma contained by powerful magnetic fields that constantly twist and churn across the Sun’s surface and well up from its interior. The Sun is boiling with magnetic fields, and when particularly large ones erupt from deep below its surface we get the features we see as sunspots, filaments, and prominences.

When those fields break, the plasma they contained gets blasted out into space as coronal mass ejections… and this is what typically happens when one hits Earth. (But it could be much worse.)

Hey, that’s what it’s like living with a star!

Stay up to date on the latest solar events on the SDO mission page here.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

What Color is the Sun?

What Color is the Sun?

Ask anyone, “what color is the Sun”? and they’ll tell you the obvious answer: it’s yellow.

But is it really?

Please don’t go check, it’s not safe to look directly at the Sun with your unprotected eyes.

From our perspective it does look a little yellow, especially after sunrise or shortly before sunset,

But don’t be fooled.

If you could travel into space and look at the Sun without going blind, you’d find that it’s actually white, and not yellow.

Using a prism, you can see how sunlight can be broken up into the spectrum of its colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. When you mix all those colors together, you get white.

Here’s the strange part.

If look at all the photons coming in, our star is actually sending the most photons in the green portion of the spectrum,

Our Sun appears yellow to us because of the atmosphere.

Photons in the higher end of the spectrum – blue, indigo and violet – are more likely to be scattered away, while the lower end of the spectrum – red, orange and yellow – are less easily scattered.

Transit of Venus from Japan. 'Japanese fishermen before the 'Great Sun of Hiroshima'. Credit: Niki Gaida
Credit: Niki Gaida
When the Sun is close to the horizon, you’re seeing it distorted by more of the Earth’s atmosphere, scattering away the bluer photons and making it appear red.

When there’s smoke and pollution in the air, it enhances the effect and it will look even redder.

If the Sun is high in the sky, where it has the least amount of atmospheric interference, it will appear more blue.

The Sun, with AR1800 on July 28, 2013. This sunspot poses a slim threat for M-class flares the next few days, NASA says. Credit and copyright: César Cantú.
The Sun. Credit and copyright: César Cantú.
We’re so familiar with the Sun being yellowish-orange, that astronomers will artificially change the color of their images to look more yellowy.

But really, the Sun looks like a pure white ball – especially when you’re out in space.

Interestingly, the color of the Sun is very important to astronomers. They use a technique called spectroscopy to stretch out the spectrum of light coming from a star. Dark lines in this spectrum tell you exactly what it’s made of.

You can see which stars have high amounts of metals, or which are mostly hydrogen and helium, leftover from the Big Bang.

This color also tells you the temperature of the star. Cooler stars are actually redder. Betelgeuse is only 3500 Kelvin. Hotter stars, like Rigel, can get above 10000 Kelvin, and they look blue.

Our own Sun has a temperature of almost 5800 Kelvin, and when viewed outside of our atmosphere, appears white. in colour.

Posted on by Elizabeth Howell

Asteroid Vs. Comet: What The Heck Is 3200 Phaethon?

A very zoomed-in image of Phaethon from NASA's STEREO spacecraft, showing a comet-like extension. Credit: Jewitt, Li, Agarwal /NASA/STEREO

Sometimes, putting things into categories difficult. Witness how many members of the general public are still unhappy that Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet, a decision made by the International Astronomical Union more than seven years ago.

And now we have 3200 Phaethon, an asteroid that is actually behaving like a comet. Scientists found dust that is streaming from this space rock as it gets close to the sun — similarly to how ices melt and form a tail as comets zoom by our closest stellar neighbor.

Phaethon’s orbit puts it in the same originating region as other asteroids (between Mars and Jupiter), but its dust stream is much closer to actions performed by a comet — an object that typically comes from an icy region way beyond Neptune. So far, therefore, the research team is calling Phaethon a “rock comet.” And after first proposing a theory a few years ago, they now have observations as to what may be going on.

Phaethon is not only an asteroid, but also a source of a prominent meteor shower called the Geminids. This shower happens every year around December when the Earth plows into the cloud of debris that Phaethon leaves in its wake. Astronomers have known about the Geminids’ source for a generation, but for decades could not catch the asteroid in the act of shedding its stuff.

That finally came with images of NASA’s twin sun-gazing Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft that were taken between 2009 and 2012. The researchers saw a “comet-like tail” extending from the 3.1-mile (five kilometer) asteroid. “The tail gives incontrovertible evidence that Phaethon ejects dust,” stated David Jewitt, an astronomer at the University of California, Los Angeles who led the research. “That still leaves the question: why?”

Time lapse-photo showing geminids over Pendleton, OR. Credit: Thomas W. Earle
Time lapse-photo showing geminids over Pendleton, OR. Credit: Thomas W. Earle

The answer lies in just how close Phaethon whizzes past the sun. At perihelion, its closest approach to the sun, it only appears eight degrees (16 solar diameters) away from the sun in Earth’s sky. This close distance makes it all but impossible to study the asteroid without special equipment, which is why STEREO came in so handy.

When Phaethon reaches its closest approach of 0.14 Earth-sun distances, surface temperatures rise above an estimated 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit (700 degrees Celsius). It’ s way too hot for ice, as what happens with a comet. In fact, it’s probably hot enough to make the rocks crack and break apart. The researchers publicly hypothesized this was happening at least as far back as 2010, but this finding provided more evidence to support that theory.

“The team believes that thermal fracture and desiccation fracture (formed like mud cracks in a dry lake bed) may be launching small dust particles that are then picked up by sunlight and pushed into the tail,” a statement from the research team read.

“While this is the first time that thermal disintegration has been found to play an important role in the solar system,” they added, “astronomers have already detected unexpected amounts of hot dust around some nearby stars that might have been similarly produced.”

The results were presented at the European Planetary Science Congress on Tuesday. By the way, STEREO also caught Mercury behaving somewhat like a comet in results released in 2010, although that find was related to the planet’s escaping sodium atmosphere.

Read more about the research in the June 26 issue of Astrophysical Letters. A preprint version is also available on Arxiv.

Source: European Planetary Science Congress

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Astrophoto: Sunspot Flyover

A detailed image of the Sun's photosphere taken near Paris, France, with an added detail: at 747 airplane. Credit and copyright: Sebastien Lebrigand.

Watch out! That plane is heading straight for a sunspot! Astrophotographer Sebastien Lebrigand was taking some detailed images of the Sun and when something zoomed into his field of view, a 737 airplane. He was about 70 km outside of Paris France when he took this image, using a CANON EOS 500D camera and a 114 mm refractor telescope with a 1200mm focal length. Exposure: 1 / 3200s in 100 iso. The image was taken on September 5, 2013.

Nice catch!

Want to get your astrophoto featured on Universe Today? Join our Flickr group or send us your images by email (this means you’re giving us permission to post them). Please explain what’s in the picture, when you took it, the equipment you used, etc.

Posted on by Jason Major

An Illustrative Explanation Of Our Solar System

The Solar System: Our Home in Space (screenshot) © Philipp Dettmer Information Design

The Solar System: it’s our home in space, the neighborhood that we all grew up in and where — unless we figure out a way to get somewhere else — all of our kids and grandkids and great-great-great-great-times-infinity-great-grandkids will grow up too. That is, of course, until the Sun swells up and roasts Earth and all the other inner planets to a dry crunchy crisp before going into a multi-billion year retirement as a white dwarf.

But until then it’s a pretty nice place to call home, if I may say so myself.

Edu-film designer Philipp Dettmer and his team have put together a wonderful little animation explaining the basic structure of the Solar System using bright, colorful graphics and simple shapes to illustrate the key points of our cosmic neighborhood. It won’t teach you everything you’ll ever need to know about the planets and it’s not advisable to use it as a navigation guide, but it is fun to watch and well-constructed, with nice animation by Stephan Rether and narration by Steve Taylor.

Check out the full video below:

“Through information design, concepts can be made easy and accessible when presented in a short, understandable edu-film or perhaps an infographic. Whether explaining the vastness of the universe or the tiniest building blocks of life – all information can be presented in a way that everyone understands. Regardless of prior knowledge.”
– Philipp Dettmer

(And come on, admit it… you learned something new from this!)

Credit: Philipp Dettmer Information Design. HT to Colin Lecher at Salon.