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NASA Lets Us Watch the Sun Spin For 3 Years In 4 Minute Video

Posted by Soulskill on from the great-balls-of-fire dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Back in February 2010 NASA launched the Solar Dynamics Observatory–a 3-axis stabilized satellite and fully redundant spacecraft. The aim of the SDO is to monitor solar activity and see how that impacts space weather. As part of its observations, the SDO captures an image of the Sun every 12 seconds using the onboard Atmospheric Imaging Assembly, but varies those shots across 10 different wavelengths. NASA has now collected three years worth of image data from the SDO and has put together a video letting us see the Sun spin in all its glory." If you watch closely, you can see individual frames containing the Moon and Venus.

9 of 34 comments (clear)

  1. Do they know why? by gr8_phk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Do they know why all the activity seems to be concentrated in 2 bands? One in the northern and one in the southern hemisphere. I would presume there is some sort of convection going on like on earth where there are westerly winds at some latitudes and easterly winds at others. But then why would that activity be on a 11 year cycle? I found this puzzling and am wondering if anyone knows the answers.

    1. Re:Do they know why? by Dunbal · · Score: 3, Funny

      The answers to those questions come at the price of having to give up ever having sex with another human being again.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    2. Re:Do they know why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      due to the sun's rotation, material at the equator weighs less than material at the poles. this drives a macro-level dual toroidal current from the poles to the equator internally, and from the equator to the poles externally. Just like on Earth, the flow of these currents are subject to Coriolis forces, resulting in lots of activity. As for the 11-year cycle, someone else will have to answer that.

    3. Re:Do they know why? by Jason+Levine · · Score: 2

      Haven't you listened to the They Might Be Giants album, Here Comes Science? The sun isn't a mass of incandescent gas. It's a miasma of incandescent plasma!

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLkGSV9WDMA

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    4. Re:Do they know why? by geekoid · · Score: 2

      Haha yes scientists don't get sex haha. yeah, that's new.

      Yawn. Got anything YOU might have thought up?

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    5. Re:Do they know why? by iggymanz · · Score: 3, Informative

      The cause of the solar cycles is still under debate. One theory is tidal forces from Jupiter and to a lesser extent Saturn causes it, another is solar jet stream oscillations (which I think other replier below read about), another is the "solar inertial motion" of the Sun about the center of mass of the solar system.

    6. Re:Do they know why? by Dunbal · · Score: 2

      I do actually. It's published.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  2. it gave me a sun burn by BenSchuarmer · · Score: 2

    curse my pale skinned ancestors

  3. FOSS Onboard SDO by joelsherrill · · Score: 5, Informative

    The RTEMS Project (http://www.rtems.org) is very proud to be part of this successful mission. For details see http://rtemsramblings.blogspot.com/2010/02/nasa-solar-dynamic-observatory-launched.html