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NASA Solar Satellite's First Sun Images
coondoggie writes "NASA today showed off the amazing first pictures of the Sun taken from its 6,800lb Solar Dynamics Observatory flying at an orbit 22,300 miles above Earth. The first images show a variety of activity NASA says provide never-before-seen detail of material streaming outward and away from sunspots. Others show extreme close-ups of activity on the sun's surface. The spacecraft also has made the first high-resolution measurements of solar flares in a broad range of extreme ultraviolet wavelengths."
No, real nerds would argue about the mass of the chick, right in front of her...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
My pleasure!
Something else to think about - you spoke of energy levels - just one of those granules is about the size of the Earth*, and the average temperature at the surface of the sun is around 6000 Kelvin. If the earth was magically transported there, everything on the surface would evaporate instantly, and the oceans would boil completely away in a matter of minutes. The rest of the planet might last a few days, at the most.
We humans, with our fusion weapons, think we have "harnessed the fury of the stars" while in reality we've barely touched upon the energy levels that are common everywhere - and our sun is just a "middle class" star in terms of energy levels. There are phenomenon out there that make our sun look like a spark in a nuclear explosion...
The universe is both beautiful, and terrible beyond imagination.
Welcome to astronomy :) One of the greatest pleasures I find is in expanding minds...
* roughly; the sun is about a million miles in diameter, and granule size varies. It's a close enough approximation, however.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.