Stereo View of the Sun

Roland Piquepaille writes "NASA's STEREO mission will be launched in 2006 with the goal of imaging the sun and the solar winds in 3-D. According to NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center and to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), two identical spacecrafts will be placed in different orbits to provide us with 'stereo' views of the Sun. After the launch in Spring 2006, the two observatories will be separated after a couple of months, one orbiting ahead of the Earth, and the other staying behind. So we should be able to see the Sun in 3-D in less than a year."

Comments

Re:Can't we do that already?

[bizard]

Not to spoil a good joke, but no. Your eyes aren't far enough apart to get stereo vision past about 18 feet. You can move your head around to improve that (and your brain does a good job of faking it), but not good enough for stereo vision at 1au.

Another interesting part of the mission is that over a period of several years, the stereo craft will actually get further away from earth giving us an ever changing view. I just saw a talk at the Berkeley SSL by one of the scientists about the new solar weather modeling they will be able to do with it.

We can't do that already.

[Webmoth]

No, we can't see it in 3D when we look out the window. The reason is that our interocular distance - the spacing between our eyes, about 60-70 mm - is too narrow in relation to the distance involved. I don't recall the practical limit of this ratio, but beyond a certain range all objects appear to lie in the same plane. When you look at the moon, shading is your only clue that it is not a flat disk. (Does a single-image photograph of the moon have any less appearance of depth than when you look at the moon directly?) This is also why we can't tell just by looking how far away each star is. We can only tell by observing the stars at opposite ends of Earth's orbit -- effectively making the interocular distance millions of miles.

Make your own 3D images of Mars and things

[saskboy]

http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/spotlight/3d01.html

NASA provides a guide for those with Photoshop, to make red / blue stereo images like you see on their website.

If anyone wants to convert the steps in the link to The Gimp 2.2, I'd be very greatful. I get stuck on about step 5 when I paste the 2 colour image into the other grey one and don't get the shaddowy red blue image that needs adjusting.

SOHO daily views are best for now

[Lu]

Some of the best images of the sun's daily activity are to be found at SOHO's site, http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/. I check it daily.

If you choose "the sun now" and then the MPEG or animated gif of the LASCO C3 (full res is best - and I'm so sorry SOHO for doing this to you!!!) you can watch as a comet makes a close approach to the sun today. Happens every few days. Sometimes they make it out the back, but most get eaten up. We'll see with this one.