This week’s Boston Globe’s Big Pictures features the Sun
This animation shows the Sun over the course of six days starting June 25, 2007. You can clearly see the rotation and some flares and prominences. Animations like this really drive home the point that the Sun is a dynamic body and not just the constatnt light we see with out eyes.
Be sure to check out the rest of the Big Picture: The Sun.
Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicist Blog.
Posts
11 comments:
Of all the stupid things...I didn't know the sun rotated? WOW I thought it just hung around all day. Great shot.
Magnificent pictures,Hale!! I just love those space blogs-always learning something from them.
I put up the sun gif on another site and linked to the article. Great pics.
I saw a special on the sun on the History Channel, so now I'm an expert.
Very H O T!!! :)
awesome picture Hale!
Very cool. So clear it doesn't even look real.
kk, the image was taken from the SOHO satellite. SOHO is orbiting at the first LaGrange point about a million miles closer to the Sun than the Earth.
Not only does the Sun rotate, it has differential rotation. It takes a point on the equator about 25 days to go around once and about 36 days at the poles. This differential rotation leads to all kinds of twisted and tangled magnetic fields and I don't want anything to do with the mathematics behind them (that math would keep me from drunk emailing!)
Differential rotation? That is my "learn a new thing each day" thing. Wow. That is crazy. Is this only possible because the sun is a gas?
You got it, kk. Jupiter and Saturn have similar behavior (although not quite as pronounced).
So next time I get "gassed," I can explain my irregular behavior on differential rotation and tangled magnetic fields? Cool... ;D
Okay, I think we are going to have to degauss you before the next JTI gathering!
Post a Comment