NASA Video Captures Decades of the Sun's Spitting Fury (cnet.com) 29
An anonymous reader shares a report: Dec. 2 was the 25th anniversary of the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a joint project from NASA and the European Space Agency. To celebrate, the agencies released a dramatic, nearly 50-minute-long video showing the sun blasting out solar material from 1998 through 2020. The SOHO spacecraft constantly stares at the sun, recording its every whim. It's spectacular and mesmerizing. "What becomes clear as the sun turns and years pass and background stars whirl by, is how constant the stream of material is that is blasted in all directions -- the solar wind," ESA said in a statement on Wednesday. "This constant wind is interrupted only by huge explosions that fling bows of material at vast speeds, filling the solar system with ionized material and solar radiation."
A few questions (Score:3)
When the blurb says the background stars whirl by, is that because the probe is orbiting the Sun or because of the movement of our solar system through the universe? Or both?
What are those bright white objects with horizontal "tails" shown every so often? Plants? Comets"? Other probes?
I am presuming some of the background stars are really planets (not the ones I'm talking about above).
How long will this probe stay out there and continue recording this?
Re:A few questions (Score:5, Informative)
SOHO (the "probe") is in a halo orbit around the Sun–Earth L1 point so it orbits with the Earth around the sun, This why you see the stars moving against the background. Their motion will repeat every sidereal year. Our solar system is not moving fast enough through to galaxy for us to see appreciable motion of the background stars, at least at the resolution of the video.
You can definitely see Mercury and Venus in the videos. Someone posted a link in to comments to a point where you can see a comet zipping through the perihelion of its orbit.
It is possible that some of the background "stars" might be outer planets, but that would take some in-depth research to figure out which of those dots they might be.
SOHO began operation in 1996 and will probably continue for the next couple of years.
Background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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the comet is at 7:17 (Score:2)
(posting AC to protect moderations)
there may be others but at 7:17 is a quite spectacular comet transit
Also awesome comet on 2011-12-15 (Score:2)
Check out the comet on 2011-12-15
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Re: A few questions (Score:4, Informative)
The probe is at one of the Lagrange points (between Earth and Sun), so it follows Earth orbit around the Sun.
Brighter spots are planets. Sometimes you can see comets diving in the Sun or going around it, but maybe itâ(TM)s too hard to see from the video.
There are two solar activity maximums during the video around 2000-2002 and 2010-2012 (it follows an 11 year cycle more or less). You can see it from how much material is ejected from the Sun then compared to now.
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And to add to what the others have said, the 'tails' are caused by pixel bleed on the sensor. See https://sohowww.nascom.nasa.go... [nasa.gov] and
https://sohowww.nascom.nasa.go... [nasa.gov]
Most solar imagers (telescopes & coronographs) have similar problems. The imagers on STEREO are oriented differently, and so the pixel bleed is vertical, not horizontal : https://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/a... [nasa.gov]
SDO/AIA takes every other image in "Automatic Exposure Correction" mode, but it doesn't fully fix the problems. There's a bit of an i
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"GOES 13 SXI sustained damage to several pixels of its detector while observing this X9 flare event. The source of the damage was the large X-ray flux of the flare convolved with the observing sequence. At the time, the susceptibility of the detector to radiation damage was not well understood or constrained. The type of damage affects 8 lines of pixels across the CCD and is unlikely to recover. Operational constraints and updates to on-board observing sequence software will enable the SXI to continue its m
This video is awesome (Score:2)
The really bright ones are planets. You will see some of them that appear to move in the opposite direction of the stars. Those are Venus and Mercury moving around the far side of the sun faster than we are moving around the sun. There are also some bright ones that appear to move the same direction as the stars (right) but not as fast as the stars, they drift to the left with respect to the stars. These are outer planets that are moving around the sun, but not as fast as the earth. Some move to the r
Ouuu, a great stoner view! (Score:2)
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~Mr. Fork
With the right amount of smoked or ingested mary-jane, this could be a very cool spaced-out experience!
The formular is not a requisite for the ladderer.
~Ms. Spoon
Inclined Spirals
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
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Ha! Just got pointed to a "spiral train" on youtube the other day. 7 HO scale engines pulling over a hundred cars. It's just the same except different!
Visible comet zooming by (Score:1)
Re:Visible comet zooming by (Score:4, Interesting)
A *lot* of comets were discovered by SOHO: https://sungrazer.nrl.navy.mil... [navy.mil]
(I don't know if they're still taking submissions. NRL's budget was cut during the SOHO "bogart" mission: https://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/... [nasa.gov] )
(disclaimer: I used to work the Solar Data Analysis Center, the mission archive for SOHO)
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we're not going to make it (Score:1)
I go to youtube to watch the very cool video and what do i see in the "watch next" list on the right ?
yes, that's right, covid-19 is a hoax conspiracy theory videos.
and a lot of them.
SOHO recovery (Score:3)
One of the greatest feats in deep space missions is, imho, the recovery of SOHO after a fault that sent it spinning on June 24 1998. After entering a series of failure modes, the spacecraft wound up in the wrong orientation, spinning out of control, with its solar arrays not in a good orientation to get power. As its batteries slowly drained, It was eventually recovered and put back into service by the end of November. Since then, the last of its gyros have failed, and ESA developed a gyroless stabilization mode, a first for a 3 axis stabilized spacecraft.
The craft itself is impressive, but the work that has been done with it is even more impressive, imho.
Comment removed (Score:3)
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Experts Doubt the Sun Is Actually Burning Coal
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“If the sun were composed of coal, it would last at the present rate only 5,000 years. The sun, in all probability, is not a burning, but an incandescent, body. Its light is rather that of a glowing molten metal than that of a burning furnace. But it is impossible that the sun should constantly be giving out heat, without either losing heat or being supplied with new fuel. Assuming that the heat of the sun has been kept up by meteoric bodies falling into it, it is possible from the mass of the solar system to determine approximately the period during which the sun has shone. The limits lie between 100 millions and 400 millions of years.”
—Scientific American, August 1863 https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
"These so-called 'experts' are full of it. Everyone knows Helios pulls the sun across the sky with his chariot so it's impossible to be powered by meteoric bodies falling into it."
-- some Greek guy, a long time ago
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Dislike (Score:2)
While I viewed a couple of minutes of the footage and find it quite fascinating, must I say... who are those 9 people are who clicked on the Dislike button? And what is their problem??
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ikr? I imagine there are a lot of pre-teens out there doing it for "fun". And, ofc, there are probably a lot more out there that are much older but haven't matured at the same rate. Then add the ones with teenage maturities of obstinance and rebellion. Perhaps we should count our blessings that there are only 9.
Graph/video mashup (Score:1)
It'd be great if they combined this video with graphs of flare activity. While it's pretty obvious when the big juicy M/X-class flares come up you can see any corresponding buildup.
Comets Galore (Score:2)
I went through some of this. There are comets that you can see that dive into the sun. Many dive straight in. Many are flung right back out.
That is one of the coolest time lapses I've ever seen other than maybe a bullet hitting a pig on MythBusters.
--
Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it. - George Bernard Shaw