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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
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
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.
Ah, jeez, that old thing. Looking at an eclipse is quite a different affair than looking just at the Sun. Looking directly at the Sun with your naked eye is dazzling and maybe a little stupid, but it won't make you go blind: the human eye's minimum pupil size is coincidentally just small enough to handle the energy flux (which makes sense in the context of evolution). Eclipses trigger a bug in the eye's auto-aperture system, so that your pupil can end up wide open as you look at the mostly-eclipsed Sun. That can 'burn' pinholes in your retina.
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.
Speaking of the pinhole viewing of eclipses.. Back in the early 90's there was a near total eclipse where I was going to school. My car was a convertible and it was a bright warm day in May..
Well, stopping at the drive up ATM which happened to be located under a young tree... I looked down and my car seat was covered with hundreds of tiny eclipses coming into and out of focus as the sunglight came through tiny "pinholes" made by the spaces between overlapping leaves which were slowly moving with the small breeze. It was quite a sight to behold right there in my car.
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.