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Space NASA Science

Solar Probe Films Plasma Loops, Sunspots in Action 47

Posted by Zonk from the i-do-so-love-the-interstellar-pretties dept.
brian0918 writes "NewScientist reports that Japan's Hinode (Solar-B) spacecraft has captured videos of surface details of the Sun, including the development of loops of hot plasma above the surface, and activity around sunspots. From the article: 'It is hoped that its observations will shed light on what triggers solar eruptions — called coronal mass ejections (CMEs). These ejections spew out radiation that poses a health risk for astronauts, and they can also knock out satellites. The mission team is still testing out the spacecraft's instruments, but full scientific observations will probably be underway by January 2007.' More videos can be viewed at NASA's site."
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Solar Probe Films Plasma Loops, Sunspots in Action More

Solar Probe Films Plasma Loops, Sunspots in Action

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  • We already know about the malicious spirits in the sun that shoot balls of plasma at us. The question is, what keeps them from knocking out this spy with a well-aimed CME?*

    *The second question is at least half-serious.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • We already know about the malicious spirits in the sun that shoot balls of plasma at us.
      Hey, you! Be careful or the scientologists will sue /. again!

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by W2IRT ( 679526 )

      We already know about the malicious spirits in the sun that shoot balls of plasma at us

      Malicious spirits you say? Or perhaps Malicious sprites? I'll have to run this one by Sunspot Louie and The Old Timer.

      Everybody, even the QRPers down the hill, knows that Sunspots are whipped up by the Palos Verdes Sundancers every 11 years http://www.geocities.com/k2cddx/sundancers.html [geocities.com]. At the bottom of the cycle their leader, Solar Max hauls out the Big Bass Bongo, BIG DX, and so begins the whirling machinations that bring about the arrival of the next sunspot peak, which, as you know, charges th

  • We've had satellites designed to study the sun for decades now. We have magnetograms, cameras operating all the way up into the Gamma frequencies, spectrographs of about 14 different varieties, and good old-fashioned eyeballs (heavily filtered if directly observing the surface). This is revolutionary because...?

    That said, it's certianly good to learn more about the most vital, influential, and dangerous object in the solar system.
    • This is revolutionary because...?

      Because I still had a spot on my wall that was lacking an awesome solar-flare poster, duh.

      Wait...you mean, they put those telescopes and stuff up there for some purpose other than making really neat posters and desktop patterns? Bonus.

    • higher res, different wavelengths (Score:4, Interesting)

      by oneiros27 ( 46144 ) on Saturday December 02, 2006 @08:35AM (#17079574) Homepage
      Hinode (SOLAR-B [nasa.gov]) is in may ways an upgrade to the previous Yohkoh [montana.edu] (SOLAR-A) mission.

      The main difference is that Hinode uses 4 megapixel cameras over the 1 megapixel cameras flown in other space-based solar observatories. (note -- ground based solar observatories have higher resolutiion cameras, but they can't observe these frequencies as x-rays can't make it past the atmosphere. (RHESSI [nasa.gov] observes in hard x-ray, but it's not a full-disk imager. SXI [noaa.gov] on GOES is full disk, but it's on soft x-ray)

      Now, a couple of weeks after Hinode launched, STEREO [nasa.gov] also launched -- which is not only 4 megapixel cameras, but two observatories, and besides Ulysses [nasa.gov], the first (two) solar observatories not in the sun-earth line. (I'm not a solar physicist, so I don't know what sort of instrumentation package Ulysses carried. Due to the flight path not staying a constant distance from the sun, and because our group doesn't track it*, I can only assume it's insitu and not remote sensing). The more impressive solar observatory will be the Solar Dynamics Observatory, aka SDO [nasa.gov].

      The reason that SDO is impressive, even though it's in the sun-earth line and isn't as useful as STEREO for solar weather, is that it will be flying 16 megapixel cameras. Because it will be in an inclined geosyncronous orbit [nasa.gov], it will have its own ground station for constant data transfer at a full data rate without making use of the Deep Space Network [nasa.gov]. This allows it to not only send larger pictures, but more of them -- AIA will be taking images every 10 seconds. No space based solar observatory even comes close to that sort of a data rate. (STEREO is estimated at 1.5GB/day, while SDO will be 1TB/day)

      * By 'our group', I'm referring to the Virtual Solar Observatory [virtualsolar.org], for which I'm a programmer.
      ** Please be aware that these are the things that I hear in passing while doing my job. Although I think I'm right on all of this, it wouldn't hurt to get a second source that actually is a solar physicist and deals with the instruments directly.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Korin43 ( 881732 )
        Why 4 megapixel? I was under the impression that 6 megapixel cameras were on the market..
        • STEREO launched some time ago (they are two of the many satellites which I mentioned we already had up) when 4MP was pretty good. Remember that space hardware needs to be hardened against radiation; it tends to lag slightly behind the cutting edge of consumer electronics. However, they make up for it in quality; I'm sure those 4MP cameras (probably even the old 1MP cameras) took images of comparable of superior power to my one-year-old 5MP camera.

          So, having said all that... the new observatory uses 16 megap
      • No no, the major achievement of Hinode isn't the size of the detector.

        It's the large size of the telescopic mirror used for this mission. It's extremely hard to build a solar telescope with a large mirror (50cm for SOT? I forgot) because a large mirror would increase heat intake from the Sun into the optic system. Unless one finds a way to release its heat intake from the satellite, it keeps heating up. And that's really not good thing for the satellite and instruments on board. The trick is to release mos

  • oddly beautiful (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    oddly beautiful .mpg [nasa.gov] of plasma arcing...
    • Mirror of that [homelinux.com]
    • OMG, I've seen that in anime before. That means...they must KNOW THE FUTURE!! The world will soon end in a craze of technoviolence and mutant tentacles! Repent! Repent! Or was that the one that ended with bunny-girl necking with the twin psychic sisters. I don't quite remember..
  • It is hoped that [the probe's] observations will shed light on what triggers eruptions -- called coronal mass ejections (CMEs)

    Are you sure this isn't a probe that they sent to Uranus?
  • ....I think I just had a great idea for a new cereal brand. Sorry, I'm hungry.
  • I always had a bad feeling about that sunspot, but I never suspected it was the Eye of Sauron [nasa.gov].

  • very OT, but (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by rucs_hack ( 784150 )
    can someone please tell me how this tagging thing works? I can't seem to work out how to do that..

  • Anyone know what scale that video is at? In other words, what's the real-world distance from the left edge to the right edge?
     
  • Well half of them are really amazing... the other half I could not see. Anybody else getting garbelled mplayer output?
  • Hey astronomer nerds: does anyone have further updates on the theory that the Sun has a ferrite/calcium solid surface that lights up the neon plasma layer with electric arcs? Will Hinode help with clearing this up? Heven't heard much on this interesting interpretation recently.

  • Is anyone reminded of the descriptions of the arcing loops in Stanislaw Lem's Solaris [amazon.com]?

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