NASA Solar Satellite's First Sun Images 103
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."
Rather Large Image for the Article (Score:5, Informative)
I didn't see a link in the article, but here's the original NASA press release [nasa.gov].
Video (Score:4, Informative)
There's some absolutely awesome video from SDO here [cnn.com]
Wow.
SB
Re:Video (Score:5, Informative)
Better article [nasa.gov]
This is incredible stuff. The CNN author called it "Hubble for the sun" and that's exactly what it is.
SB
Re:Cut to the chase! Hit first base! (Score:3, Informative)
What particularly struck me was the very "organic" looking cell structure
There's not much information Granule (solar physics) [wikipedia.org] but it will give you a start on learning more.
(Solar astronomy is one of my hobbies, so I knew what to search for. Enjoy!)
SB
Re:Holy Amounts of data! (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry, you can't see the design documents! :-P
Flight operations for the spacecraft is at GSFC, while instrument operations can be done at both GSFC and at the science operations centers.
Science data is stored temporarily ( up to 30 days) at the dedicated ground stations at White Sands. The data is transferred in close to real-time (OC-3 lines for HMI/AIA, DS-3 for EVE) from there to each of the science instrument data centers (LASP for EVE, and JSOC at Stanford for HMI and AIA).
So, in this case it is the science teams (not NASA) that must store and process massive amounts of data. Perhaps obviously, none of the science data processing is done at GSFC (only engineering data).
Actually, you can find some documents online for HMI/AIA by searching Google for "jsoc sdp".
Link to SDO? (Score:4, Informative)
Almost all of the links on that article refer back to crap at network world -- I'm still trying to figure out what this link is at the bottom, that claims to be "Solar Dynamics Observatory", but seems to just be a 404 to : sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/site/icon.ico
(There's no 'images' directory on that server at the top level)
I'd just appreciate it if someone were going to link to our servers that they didn't link to crap.
If you want movies, see one of :
Re:Torrent Please (Score:3, Informative)
Well, this is my first attempt at a torrent; hope this works
http://www.seedpeer.com/details/3024437/SDO.html [seedpeer.com]
Re:Predict the weather? (Score:4, Informative)
Depends on the flight path. Flights that go to high latitudes (great cirle routes over the north pole) sometimes lose communications due to (currently unpredicted) solar events. They are not allowed to fly without communications, so they have to divert to more southerly routes to restore comm. Of course this takes more time and fuel -- perhaps even forcing a landing at a closer airport.
Accurate predictions of solar events would allow the airline industry to plan better.
Airlines == Polar flights (Score:4, Informative)
The issue is that when you're flying long distances, you have the choice of either flying over the poles, or refueling mid-way. If there's a solar storm going on, everyone's exposed to a fair amount of radiation in a polar flight, and it might affect some of their instruments. Most airlines will take the refueling stop if there's a storm.
The radiation likely won't be enough to affect the average passenger, but it's the pilots who get to decide, and it's the flight crews that are exposed to radiation over and over again on these trips. ... but it'll be more important when we move to GPS for air traffic control -- GPS doesn't work when there's too much noise in that frequency band. This would mean that the FAA would have to fall back to radar, and all of the benefits they're claiming for their new system would be wiped out. (ie, need to leave more space around planes, so you can't pack the airspace as well)
A Link to Several Movies (Score:5, Informative)
I found that this link [nasa.gov] provides access to several high quality movies that downloaded quite quickly. They are very interesting to watch.