Mysteries of the Sun

[Drone]

NASA has just released five new videos called "Mysteries of the Sun". The videos describe the science of the Sun and its effects on the solar system and Earth. These five movies (Space Weather, Solar Variability, The Heliosphere, Earth's Magnetosphere, Earth's Upper Atmosphere) cover the breadth of solar, heliospheric, and geospace science, a field known as heliophysics.

With beautiful graphics and well-explained narration, the series has won awards even before its public release, including the 2011 Platinum 3rd Annual Pixie Award in the category of Motion Graphics, receiving compliments from the judges such as "breath-taking animation" and "Some of the best in the competition."

I totally agree with the judges. Absolutely breathtaking videos *thumbs up*

The five movies are available on DVD but you can watch them online as well:

http://missionscience.nasa.gov/sun

Very interesting videos. Plus, there's a guidebook (39MB pdf file) with full-color images, diagrams, and charts that will make the science of heliophysics clear for all readers. You can download it (see the link above).

[panchavan]

Good one.... Amazed of it . . .

[Drone]

well deserved bump:

Here's another interesting video which has got to do with Earth and Sun.



This 4 min video tells us about hidden portals in Earth's magnetic field
They're called X-points or electron diffusion regions.

"They're places where the magnetic field of Earth connects to the magnetic field of the Sun, creating an uninterrupted path leading from our own planet to the sun's atmosphere 93 million miles away," explains plasma physicist Jack Scudder of the University of Iowa.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news...hiddenportals/

[DannibusX]

If I worked at NASA I'd call the probe GlaDOS

[Drone]

A huge, dark-colored filament stretched across nearly half the solar face (800000 km in length) on August 5th. Here's the hires image:





And now here's some info about solar flares. According to James R. Webb, astronomy professor in the Department of Physics, solar flares are a pretty common occurrence, typically occurring in cycles. The current cycle is expected to peak in 2013.



Here's the video

[Drone]

This burst of solar plasma being hurled from the eastern limb of the Sun can release up to 100 billion kg of material, and the speed of the ejection can reach 1000 km/s. Some of the explosions approach the power in one billion H-bombs.

That's a very spectacular scene because Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) are sexy.

Solar plasma is heated to tens of millions of degrees, and electrons, protons, and heavy nuclei are accelerated to near the speed of light.
The super-heated electrons from CMEs move along the magnetic field lines faster than the solar wind can flow. Rearrangement of the magnetic field, and solar flares may result in the formation of a shock that accelerates particles ahead of the CME loop.

This video is gonna make me come .... over to that place.

[Soylent Joe]

Jesus man, I love how progressive the science community has become recently. First Curiosity, now this. My only hope is that the pace will hold on and speed up, so we can reach some great new technological achievements before we blow ourselves up.

By the way, nobody fucks with the Sun. Watch Sunshine.

[Drone]

Another series of CMEs (coronal mass ejections) appeared on August 20. This bulbous CME certainly resembled a light bulb.

Here's the video:

[qubit]

Originally Posted by Drone

Another series of CMEs (coronal mass ejections) appeared on August 20. This bulbous CME certainly resembled a light bulb.

Here's the video:

That CME is huge. It starts off a good fraction of the size of the sun and then grows much larger than the sun. Awesome.

And the sun is 800,000 miles across. Now stick that in yer pipe and smoke it!

[Drone]

Originally Posted by qubit

That CME is huge. It starts off a good fraction of the size of the sun and then grows much larger than the sun. Awesome.

And the sun is 800,000 miles across. Now stick that in yer pipe and smoke it!

Yup they said the inner solar corona is 5.25 million miles away from the Sun.

[Drone]

Another eruption on the Sun on August 31.

Here are two spectacular videos. One of them in HD





Mindblowing ...

[Frick]

That cycle you spoke of earlier is ca 11 years btw. I remember the last one' they had some troubles in canada i think because of it.

[Drone]

Another spectacular video showing how prominence erupted off the surface of the Sun around 19:00 UT on August 31, 2012 and just kept going. This video from the STEREO Behind spacecraft shows the prominence and the coronal mass ejection (CME) in which its is embedded as it leaves the Sun (orange, EUVI) and travels through the fields of view of COR1 (green), COR2 (red), and HI1 (blue) telescopes before it finally disappears from HI1 around the end of September 2, still clearly visible more than two days after it erupted.



It's the eruption which was posted 2 posts above.

[Drone]

Another massive CME on September 27, 2012 on farside of the sun

[3870x2]

It is difficult to comprehend the size of earth compared to these explosions.

After reading the title, I couldn't help thinking of MoTS: Mysteries of the Sith.

[Inceptor]

That's pretty cool, but, CMEs happen all the time, shooting out in all directions.
Let's hope there's no strong X-class solar event + CME that ends up making a direct hit on the Earth though.

[Drone]

Another CME. Happened today (October 5). This time it's headed exactly towards Earth. Will get here in 3 days or something lol


\/

@ HammerON

[HammerON]

[Inceptor]

Not a very strong one though.
A strong X class flare would be thousands of times more intense.

[Drone]

Using a gradient filter on imagery captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) helped create this stunning video




And this is the image of a coronal hole on the sun:

[Drone]

Solar flare, on Oct. 20, 2012.

The sun emitted a significant M9 flare. M-class flares are the weakest flares that can still cause some space weather effects near Earth. Since flares are rated on a scale from 1 to 10, an M9 is a particularly strong M class flare, but still ten times weaker than the most powerful flares, which are labeled X-class.

This one is weak and not Earth directed but it's quite spectacular. Solar flares have interesting shapes and their movement is mesmerizing, I can watch this for hours. Sometimes it can look like some cosmic black magic lol. If I could only have that energy I'd smash everything around me in a second


Update:

And another Solar flare on Oct. 22

[Drone]

Since its launch in 2006, the STEREO spacecraft have drifted further and further apart to gain different views of the sun.

http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/ne...ereoreache.jpg

So now we can enjoy the full map of the Sun Here it is:

http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/ne...ereoreache.jpg

This map of the full sun on Oct. 14, 2012, was created by images from, * in order from left to right,* STEREO-A, STEREO-B and SDO.

Fascinating!

http://phys.org/news/2012-10-sun-d-s...one-sixth.html



Edit:

Picture of the day:

[Drone]

Sun just sent another Filament Eruption & CME. Now it's Earth-directed

On Nov. 9, 2012, the sun emitted an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection. It's a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of solar particles into space and can reach Earth one to three days later.

Edit: A new one:



Strong M6-Class Solar Flare: November 13, 2012

Update:

The Sun erupted with two prominence eruptions, one after the other over a four-hour period on Nov. 16, 2012. The red-glowing looped material is plasma, a hot gas made of electrically charged hydrogen and helium. The prominence plasma flows along a tangled and twisted structure of magnetic fields generated by the sun's internal dynamo. An erupting prominence occurs when such a structure becomes unstable and bursts outward, releasing the plasma.

http://news.discovery.com/space/sola...on-121118.html
http://phys.org/news/2012-11-sun.html

[Drone]

NASA's 3-minute solar cycle primer

A very interesting and informative video about solar flares, coronal mass ejections (CMEs), and flipping poles

The sunspot cycle happens because of the pole flip — north becomes south and south becomes north — approximately every 11 years. The poles reverse again back to where they started, making the full solar cycle a 22-year phenomenon. But the drama of the 11-year sunspot cycle receives the most press, as the sunspot cycle behaves the same no matter which pole is on top.

EarthSky


New Year's Eve Sun Blast Time-Lapsed By NASA | Video

[Drone]

What is a Solar X-Flare?: Sun's 'Richter Scale' Explained | Video



The video below shows coronal loops on the Sun during January 5 through 7 – the arcs extending off of the Sun where plasma moves along the magnetic field lines. The brightest spots seen here are locations where the magnetic field near the surface is exceptionally strong. The characteristic temperature here is 1 million K.



Solar Prominence