Movies from the X-Ray Telescope on the new Hinode Spacecraft, which is sensitive to a wider range of temperatures than TRACE, show much broader features, because you don't see only plasma of a single particular temperature. Nonetheless, the corona is permeated by both magnetic field and by plasma which is invisible to the spacecraft cameras. Because plasma in the solar corona is confined to individual magnetic field lines and can't flow across them, individual loops get heated separately from their surroundings, and you see only individual loops light up. When it reaches this temperature, it starts to emit radiation to which this particular TRACE passband is sensitive and it lights up. Most of these are simply plasma getting slowly heated to about a million degrees. Flares, like the massive one that they show about 2 minutes into the video, are very high-energy, impulsive events.
#Youtube staring at the sun movie#
Second, a lot of what you see in that movie aren't solar flares, but simply the natural evolution of the sun's atmosphere, the solar corona.
SOHO's images are mostly full-sun, and all are lower resolution than the TRACE movies where you see those individual loops. Since I was actually the mission planner for TRACE (the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer) when we observed many of those events, I have to point out a couple of things.įirst, most of what you see is actually from TRACE, not SOHO. We need to replace it - this is the kind of bird that if you could satellite service contracts, they'd just laugh at you before saying "no." The damn thing didn't even launch with a roll of gaffer tape, and yet, they still keep it running. Funny how they synchronize that with the data loss time. The CCDs are full of flaws from over ten years of solar activity, and have to be baked out every six months. They also have to rotate the bird 180 degrees to do so, so every six months, you have to flip the sun.
#Youtube staring at the sun how to#
They lost the ability to point the high gain antenna, but they figured out how to get medium rate telemetry off the bird 100% of the time, and high rate data most of the time, mod small blackout periods every six months. They lost pointing control of the bird in 1998, causing it to lose point on the sun, and they hydrazine fuel tank froze. It was planned as a two year mission - starting in May of 1996. The imagery SOHO has been producing is just freaking transcendent.
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