Definitely Dynamic

At a press conference today in Washington DC, researchers unveiled “First Light” images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, a space telescope designed to study the Sun. “SDO is working beautifully,” reports project scientist Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Centre. “This is even better than we could have dreamed.”

It is rather impressive.

Above: Erupting solar prominence, filmed by SDO on March 30, 2010. You may want to download the 29MB high resolution video. 

Related: Glare, Little Star. 

Comments

[Brian H]

Incredible. I wonder how much that's been speeded up.

[David]

I’d guess hours have been compressed into a few seconds. But given the size and volume of matter – maybe hundreds of thousands of kilometres in length and tens of billions of tonnes – that’s still quite brisk.

Incidentally, there’s a much smaller version of the video here.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/4541422742/in/set-72157623903514852/

And a Flickr group.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/sets/72157623903514852/

[mlrosty]

Yeah, you don't want to fuck with the Sun.

[jones]

Aye, but dare suggest that maybe this shining ball might be exerting a greater effect on climate than some bald apes and their toys and you are subject to a wrath normally reserved for child molesters....

[Anna]

The video's amazing. I'm still trying to get my head round the scale of what I’m seeing.

[David]

This may give you a ballpark idea.

http://www.life.com/image/1533954

And to help keep things in perspective...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WEL117xXpw

[Anna]

Okay, now I'm just scared.

[carbon based lifeform]

You can see the prominence twisting in the magnetic fields.

[WTP]

For some strange reason I was expecting Michael Moore to show up at the end of that YouTube video...

[pam402]

Stunning.