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SOHO Produces Images of Sunspot Interiors
Judebert writes: "The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO, the one that looks at the Sun) has used a Doppler-like device to look underneath the surface of a sunspot. It turns out to be much shallower than expected, but the data does help explain why sunspots last so much longer than theory dictates. NASA's story is more informative, but the pictures and movies at Stanford are spectacular. I've got a new background!"
SOHO's main page is a blast in general, pardon the pun. The up-to-date images of the Sun just look cool, and it has a pretty comprehensive set of links to information about that big thermonuclear furnace about 93 million miles thataway *points at big glowing thing in sky*.
It's also rather good for reminding oneself that there are things far greater than ourselves, and our own self-made problems and petty arguments. Insert quote from Babylon 5: "And All My Dreams, Torn Asunder" here.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
From the site:
"Why do we care? Understanding sunspots is essential for understanding the 11-year solar cycle, solar flare explosions, and huge coronal mass ejections that affect life and society on Earth."
Solar flares can screw up satellites and such, but as people begin to move into space more(missions to mars in the next 50 years, moon in possibly less, aren't beyond the realm of consideration anymore) this will become even more important. Getting caught by a flare without any of the protection Earth's magentosphere offers is a quick way to get fried. Any interplanet ship would obviously have to have some kind of shielding(probably between water/fuel tanks), but being able to more accurately understand and predict flares, especially for cheaper/shorter moon trips, will be vital.
Sol is a relatively young sun, no? Could it be that our sun is merely experiencing acne?
yadda
MSNBC also has a story with more pictures as well as a video right over here. A pretty well written article (If not as in-dept as the stanford one) and the video interview is pretty interesting.
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
Is it just me or did the sunspot in the animations from the stanford page look like a mandlebrot set?
Thoughts on tech, Software Engineering, and stuff
"We discovered that the outflowing material was just a surface feature," said Zhao. "If you can look a bit deeper, you find material rushing inward, like a planet-sized whirlpool or hurricane. This inflow pulls the magnetic fields together."
The cool thing for me (and I confess upfront that I don't remember much about plasma flow in stellar atmospheres) is the question of which comes first now - the magnetic field disturbance or the plasma flow.
I know that a hot ionized plasma will freeze the magnetic field lines to the plasma - and that as the plasma moves it will drag the field with it.
So what's happening here? Is the magnetic field causing the whirlpool ala the Babcock model - or is there some sort of convention flow pulling the magnetic field along with it?
Anyone more current than I know?
In illa quae ultra sunt
Actyally, it's about 5 billion years old, and expected to live another 5 billion; so it's more like middle-aged. So, it's more likely bald spots. Now, if we could only find a star-sized dose of Rogaine . . .
If it's worried about it's age, maybe scientists could find a hot little proto-star.
In no way implying that the sun needs to get laid,
-- If any of the above made sense, I assure it was purely by accident.