NASA captures solar flares, confirms human insignificance, all in glorious HD
What you’re looking at above is awe-inspiring for two reasons; one, it’s a Gizmodo story that has nothing to do with a leaked iPhone, and two, it’s some of the first imagery and data sent back from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). In it, NASA was able to capture a full solar flare (or “prominence eruption”) in action, as well as several views of the Sun’s temperature variances and magnetic fields through several different wavebands.
The purpose goes far beyond snapping pictures of the impossible, too:
SDO is designed to help us understand the Sun’s influence on Earth and Near-Earth space by studying the solar atmosphere on small scales of space and time and in many wavelengths simultaneously.
SDO’s goal is to understand, driving towards a predictive capability, the solar variations that influence life on Earth and humanity’s technological systems by determining how the Sun’s magnetic field is generated and structured, (and) how this stored magnetic energy is converted and released into the heliosphere and geospace in the form of solar wind, energetic particles, and variations in the solar irradiance.
It’s all pretty fascinating and beautiful stuff. You can learn more about the SDO mission by checking out its site here, and when you’ve had your fill of acronyms, mathematics, and space-age terminology that has little, if anything, to do with Dilithium Crystal Chambers or Hyperdrive engines, hit our jump to have it all explained to you in the beautiful simplicity offered only by Carl Sagan.
In song.
Yeah that’s right.
.
The Carl Sagan video just makes me want to watch Cosmos again.
*searching*
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