Today, NASA released onto the WWW what is sure to be one of its most popular videos of all time…Three years worth of time-lapsed video of our sun captured by the Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO)… How it was made and what to look for… Every 12 seconds, SDO captures an image of our sun at
Video of the coronal plasma rain on the Sun that we reported on earlier has now been released by NASA. The amazing video shows the event throughout its formation and duration, it’s awesome. There is a very wide variation in the types of eruptive events that occur on the Sun, even if you’ve already watched
The highest-resolution images ever taken of the Sun’s corona were just released by NASA. The solar corona is the million-degree or so outer atmosphere. The 16-megapixel images, taken in the extreme-ultraviolet wavelength of light, were captured by NASA’s High Resolution Coronal Imager, or Hi-C, which was launched on a sounding rocket on July 11th. The
[UPDATED May 11, 2012 – M-Class solar flares; see below] NASA scientists are calling it a “monster sunspot” and its size is calculated to be 60,000 miles (100,000 km) from end to end. The huge sunspot comprises most of Active Region (AR) 1476, which rotated into view this weekend. Images of the region were picked
[UPDATE: March 10, 2012; see below] Late yesterday morning, two massive X-class solare flares erupted form our sun’s surface. These are amongst the most powerful class of ‘solar storm’. One of these flares ranked an X 5.4 which makes it the most powerful flare so far this year, and one of the most powerful in
[Updated Jan. 25, 2012, added link to latest Aurora Photos] Early this morning (GMT), January 22, a huge solar flare erupted from the highly active sunspot region 1402. NASA scientists have classified the flare as a M9 flare which makes it just slightly less powerful than an X-class flare (the strongest category; C-class flares are
[updated content; Solar Flare, see below] At three times the diameter of the Earth — 25, 000 miles/40,000 km wide and 50,000miles / 80,000 km long — the newest sunspot to make its appearance on our sun’s surface is the largest seen in years, according to NASA experts. The sunspot is part of Active Region
Active Region (AR) 1302 is slowly coming into position where it directly faces the Earth. The region contains a “behemoth” sunspot — several times larger than the Earth — named sunspot 1302.
The sunspot has already been the source of two ‘X-class’ solar flares (‘X’ signifying the most extreme known); the first, measuring an X1.4, on September 22, and the second, an X1.9, coming just three days later on Sept. 24. Are more X-class flares on the way, and on their way towards Earth?
Surf’s up big time on the Sun, or just above the sun, in this case. Seems like NASA’s high resolution Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has caught conclusive evidence of classic “surfer waves” in the solar atmosphere — looking just like the kind in the opening sequence of ‘Hawaii Five-O’.
This Spring has been pretty exciting for solar activity…Following the ending of the longest ‘solar minimum’ in more than a century, our sun’s activity (solar cycle 24) picked up considerably over the course of the month of May, culminating in an impressive M-2 class (medium size) solar flare and “spectacular” coronal mass ejection (CME) on June 7.
