NASA Lets Us Watch the Sun Spin For 3 Years In 4 Minute Video 34
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.
Skip to the last few seconds... (Score:2)
It turns into a giant Wonder Woman!
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So... (Score:2)
NASA is into reruns, too.
Better stick to books this summer.
Do they know why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Do they know why? (Score:4, Funny)
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That would suggest there actually is a chance of having sex with another human being for me in the future.
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Haha yes scientists don't get sex haha. yeah, that's new.
Yawn. Got anything YOU might have thought up?
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what the hell am I doing in this forsaken rock?
Science has provided the answer: No particular reason. You are an accident of evolution. Feel better?
Re:Do they know why? (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.
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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
Re:Do they know why? (Score:4, 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.
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it gave me a sun burn (Score:3)
FOSS Onboard SDO (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 [blogspot.com]
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Pretty cool (Score:1)
Er.. Make that pretty hot.
Motion interpolation (Score:2)
It would be nice if someone could smooth the motion in this video with a plugin like Twixtor.
Stunning imagery! (Score:1)
can we do Jupiter next?? (Score:2)
I've want to see something like this of Jupiter for ages!