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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."
Nothing for you to see anymore. Please stumble along.
Can't I see the sun in 3-D right now, by looking out the window?
So a box with a pin hole is no longer cutting edge technology?
Wait, stereo is only two channels. Wouldn't Dolby make more sense?
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
This 'stereo' view seems a bit silly, since we already know what it looks like from our perspective. I'd like to see a satellite positioned 180 degrees from earth along our orbit, so that we can finally get a look at the dark side of the sun.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
They didn't turn down the detail...someone turned up the contrast! I've been staring for 3 hours now and all I see is a big white dot!
Whoa, if I look away all I see is a big black dot. Damn you, you who messes with the contrast in my head!
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
So how far apart are these going to be placed? I mean, are they going to be at the Lagrange points, which seem to be spread awfully far apart but might work, or somewhere else where the position is unstable and requires thrusters?
Also, what kind of instruments do these have? If we want, can we point them at other things and get useful pictures? Either way, it should be interesting.
Stereo Suns are NOT cool.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
It's an old one, but bears repeating:
Every time there is a solar eclipse you will find astronomers warning you to never look directly at the Sun. Even more importantly, you should not look at the Sun through a telescope unless you have a professional solar filter that covers the front of the telescope. Why?
The Sun is very bright and by focussing the light onto the back of your eye (the retina) with or without a telescope, you are putting a lot of energy (both optical light and infra-red) onto a tiny area. At some point in your life you may have tried to set paper on fire using a magnifying glass, so just think about that being done to the back of your eye. It isn't nice. Even more scarily is the fact that the retina of your eye does not have pain receptors, so you will not even feel the damage being done. It may not even become apparent until later.
I built the shoebox with the pinhole deal when I was a kid, and remember being scared to death on the day the eclipse occured!
fak3r.com
This sounds like great news to me. Solar cycle 24 should be just about beginning shortly after this thing gets operational. Try this RSS feed of solar weather from hfradio.org.
This image of 1,500,000C gas in the Sun's thin, outer atmosphere (corona) was taken March 13, 1996 by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft. Every feature in the image traces magnetic field structures. Because of the high quality instrument, more of the suttle and detail magnetic features can be seen than ever before. (Courtesy ESA/NASA)
http://www.solarviews.com/raw/sun/eitfexii.jpg
Freaky looking, but damn cool!
fak3r.com
We'll be able to see that mirror-image planet over there!
Garg
Alumnus, Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters
You would need a box with TWO pinholes to equal this advance in technology!
The trick is making one pinhole red and the other blue...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
(grumble, whinge, complain)
.. I am blind in one eye, so I *can't* see in 3-D .. No matter how good the fricking cameras are .. I'll still see in 2-D. Waste of money .. blah .. blah .. blah ...
.. yes that was not to be taken seriously .. even though I *am* blind in one eye)
.. American English is *not* my native tongue)
Fat lot of good its going to me
(/grumble, whinge, complain)
(And for the humour impaired
(And for the spelling impaired
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
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.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
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.
Iris size reacts to how bright something is in the visible spectrum, but don't react to the amount of UV, which does the damage. That's why good sunglasses have UV filtration.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
I hope they realise that they need to launch these craft at night otherwise the sun is going to burn them to a crisp.
Just when I was losing faith in NASA...
l
THE HUBBLE VIEWMASTER
http://www.worldwideslides.com/View-Master/sp.htm
Please use the Adobe Gamma Wizard applet in your neural net interface.
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* No * Yes * I hate you.
I can just look out the window straight into it, and then I'll be able to seeNOOOOOO MY EYES!!!!!!!!!
Ze goggles! Zey do nuzing!
I think that the plan is to place the satellites at the two lagrangian points that lie along Earth's orbit, which are +/- 60 degrees with respect to Earth. With 120 degrees of angular separation between them, they'll be able to resolve stuff with great depth perception, in close to real time (minus the transmission delays, computer time, etc.). In order for the earth to travel that same 120 degree arc along its orbit would take roughly four months, a much longer time scale than most interesting (or dangerous) solar phenomena.
http://www.phys.uu.nl/~bassa/eclipses/20051003.htm l
It takes about 1 million years for the photons to travel from the sun's center to the outer shell due to multiple scattering (sun radius=695Mm), before they eventually reach earth after another 8.3 minutes. Why not appreciate the light in 3D!
Its largely spherical with flares shooting out. Can I have some money?
What do you think?
http://img487.imageshack.us/my.php?image=3dsun9li. jpg
Some of the features have evolved. But the sphere shape is there as are some of the more macro features such as the corona and flares. The granules don't match up though.
That's from about five minutes of work.