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Five Glorious Years of Sun Images In a Four-Minute Video

Posted by Soulskill on from the dang,-sun dept.

An anonymous reader writes: In early 2010, NASA launched the Solar Dynamics Observatory. It carried a number of sensors dedicated to watching and measuring various aspects of the Sun. The SDO's team just celebrated its fifth anniversary by going through a half-decade worth of images, pulling out the most amazing ones, and stitching them into an amazing video (YouTube). It includes enormous flares, sunspots, the transit of Venus, and more.

11 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. Sun by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Didn't Oracle buy them and drive them into the ground?

  2. I'm such a geek... by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 2, Insightful

    After reading the title, I was trying to figure out what they'd be showing of computer evolution in five years - especially considering it was of Sun computers. At second glance, I realized "Oh, that sun." Sigh...

    Anyhow, great video. The description makes it sound like it was a series of still images in video format, but it was very dynamic (maybe series of stills were turned into video or something - I have no idea). Total space pr0n, if you swing that way. I especially enjoyed the shots where the silhouette of what I presume was Mercury passed in front, which gave a fantastic idea of the scale involved. Seems worth five minutes of your life, so give it a watch.

    --
    Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  3. Speechless by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Wow, I'm simply speechless... (but I'll try anyway)

    The Sun is far more beautiful than I imagined... I had some idea from drawings and older pictures that the sun was active, but I had no idea it was THAT active... so much that we don't know...

    To quote Agent K:

    "1,500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was the center of the universe. 500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was flat. And 15 minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."

    1. Re:Speechless by Celarent+Darii · · Score: 5, Informative

      1,500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was the center of the universe. 500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was flat.

      Except that is completely wrong. To quote an ancient from 300 BC [well over 1500 years ago]: [Text is actually quoted from Archimedes The Sand Reckoner]

      Aristarchus has brought out a book consisting of certain hypotheses, wherein it appears, as a consequence of the assumptions made, that the universe is many times greater than the 'universe' just mentioned. His hypotheses are that the fixed stars and the Sun remain unmoved, that the Earth revolves about the Sun on the circumference of a circle, the Sun lying in the middle of the Floor, and that the sphere of the fixed stars, situated about the same center as the Sun, is so great that the circle in which he supposes the Earth to revolve bears such a proportion to the distance of the fixed stars as the center of the sphere bears to its surface.

      And even the medieval theologians knew that the earth was round. To quote St. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica :

      Sciences are differentiated according to the various means through which knowledge is obtained. For the astronomer and the physicist both may prove the same conclusion: that the earth, for instance, is round: the astronomer by means of mathematics (i.e. abstracting from matter), but the physicist by means of matter itself. Hence there is no reason why those things which may be learned from philosophical science, so far as they can be known by natural reason, may not also be taught us by another science so far as they fall within revelation. Hence theology included in sacred doctrine differs in kind from that theology which is part of philosophy.

      That the earth is round was a fact so evident and proven in his time [1247, well over 500 years ago] that it was used as an example of a scientific fact. It is simply false that they thought the earth was flat.

      Much of what is said about the ancients is just complete fantasy written by propagandists and not historians.

    2. Re:Speechless by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 2

      I have no doubt that some smart people 1,500 years ago knew these things... and even 500 years ago... but the masses? The people who couldn't read and write and simply existed?

      I suspect there was a wide gap between those two groups... heck, there is such a gap today, is there not?

    3. Re:Speechless by Celarent+Darii · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Columbus was able to convince not only the Queen Isabella, but also the crews and investors who financed the voyage. There was never question of whether India was on the other side of the ocean, but rather of how far away it was. Columbus had a much smaller number than was commonly admitted, which is one reason he got the funds to go [he won the contract, if you will]. Yet the question was on how many degrees of longitude, not on whether the earth was round.

      In fact just read most medieval poetry and songs, which were well known to the people. They always refer to the earth as 'this globe' or the sphere. Even a simple sailor knows why the the ship going over the horizon doesn't just get smaller, it also 'descends' over the horizon or disappears. The visible effect of the earth's curvature is visible on the open ocean at just 100 km distance so this is something that even simple workers would know about from observation.

      The myth that people thought the earth was flat is just simply 19th century re-invention of history. It has no basis in fact.

    4. Re:Speechless by kbahey · · Score: 2

      That the earth was round, was known from the time of the Ancient Greeks.

      In fact, the circumference of the earth was measured by Eratosthenes in the 3rd century BC, with considerable accuracy, using very simple means.

      Here is Carl Sagan in Cosmos, on Eratosthenes measurement of the earth's circumference.

      --
      2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
    5. Re:Speechless by Tablizer · · Score: 2

      Columbus was an arrogant idiot who went against the common (and correct) knowledge of those days by underestimating the circumference of the Earth by a factor of four. Afterwards he was hailed as the discoverer of America and blabla

      Actually, they stripped him of credit during his lifetime because he ticked off too many people with his poor governing of colonies.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
  4. Electromagnetic force by blue+trane · · Score: 2

    Those flares and spouts are more shaped by electromagnetic fields than by gravity, right?

  5. Re:Phenomenal score and video! by mrchaotica · · Score: 3, Informative

    I was expecting more of a stationary time lapse vid covering five years

    Here ya go.

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  6. Video coverage clarification by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Informative

    There seems to be some confusion in the introduction and labeling between the 5th year of the probe, and 5 years of video. Here's a fuller compilation:

    5-yr time-lapse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

    Year 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

    Year 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

    Year 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

    Year 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

    Year 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

    Bonus "rain loop": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

    There does seem to be some overlap of coverage in the year numbers, though. Also, year 1 and 2 have bigger eruptions in my opinion.

    Magnetic fields sure do freaky stuff to plasma, making it seem to run forward and reverse at the same time.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.