Pictures: NASA Solar Observatory's First Shots

Solar Horns

Image courtesy NASA

The Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the full evolution of the March prominence eruption, from its explosive growth to its apparent retraction back into the sun. Above, an image shows the eruption dying down, breaking the loop into a set of "horns."

The eruption was featured in the first movie taken by Solar Dynamics Observatory's Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA), one of three main instruments aboard the craft. The imager can take pictures of the sun in ten light wavelengths simultaneously every ten seconds.

"AIA images the full disk of the sun at a pace, and with more channels, than ever before achieved," said Dean Pesnell, an SDO project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. (See more pictures of solar eruptions.)

Published April 21, 2010

The Sun, in Living Color

Image courtesy NASA

Looking like an Impressionist painter's cloudy sky, the solar surface swirls with color in a composite image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory's Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) instrument.

AIA pictures taken in different wavelengths reveal the range of temperatures on the sun. Overlaying several such images can show how magnetic events, such as prominence eruptions and coronal mass ejections, generate motion across the sun's surface.

The image above mixes data from the sun at a million to two million Kelvin (1.8 million to 3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit, or 999,700 to 1.9 million Celsius). (See the first 3-D pictures of the sun.)

The first pictures from SDO already "show details of our sun that have not been available to us before in a comprehensive and multidimensional manner," said NASA heliophysics director Fisher. "The impact will be truly revolutionary."

Published April 21, 2010

Sun Making Waves

Image courtesy NASA

A closeup of the sun as it appears at 80,000 Kelvin (143,540 degrees Fahrenheit, or 79,727 degrees Celsius) shows a wave rippling through the sun's surface plasma, or charged gas.

The wave, created by a coronal mass ejection, rolled across the sun at half a million miles an hour, moving the same amount of mass as what's currently in the Mississippi River, said Alan Title, a physicist at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory, which built the Solar Dynamics Observatory's Atmospheric Imaging Assembly instrument for NASA.

"We want to see what physical phenomena happen with this flare and ejection of material," Title said. Understanding the entire process on the sun can help scientists decode how the release of energy from a coronal mass ejection might affect Earth.

Published April 21, 2010

Crashing Solar Surf

Image courtesy NASA

The same wave (see previous picture) seen at 1.6 million Kelvin (2.8 million degrees Fahrenheit, or 1.5 million degrees Celsius) carves dark pits in the sun's surface as material gets pushed around at high speeds.

"The sun is constantly changing, and solar events on the sun can cause disturbances to Earth," said the University of Colorado's Tom Woods, principle investigator for the SDO's Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment. For instance, Woods said, a solar storm in 2005 temporarily knocked out radio communications among aid workers a few days after Hurricane Katrina.

Data from SDO will make scientists "better able to be proactive rather than reactive" when it comes to space weather events, he said. (Related: "'Warm Plasma Cloak' Discovered Enveloping Earth.")

Published April 21, 2010

Seismic Sunspot Spotted by SDO

Image courtesy NASA

Just as seismic waves in Earth's crust can tell us about the planet's inner structure, sound waves bouncing around inside the sun cause the surface to wiggle, helping astronomers model the sun's interior. In the picture above, a helioseismic image shows the deep structure of a roughly Earth-size sunspot captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory in March.

The Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager aboard the SDO, the source of this image, builds on similar technology on other solar spacecraft. But the new probe is able to return more data much faster than anything else currently in orbit: "The SDO is now sending four 16-megapixel images every three seconds to the ground," Goddard's Pesnell said.

SDO's speed and comprehensive approach will not only help scientists better understand space weather and its effects on Earth, it will also offer new insight into the dynamics of much more distant stars.

"It might seem SDO's research is purely local, but that is just the tip of the iceberg," said NASA astrophysicist Madhulika Guhathakurta. "We presume that most stars are also magnetically active like the sun, but the sun is the only star we can directly access and study," she said. Once we understand the sun, we'll "know how stars work in distant corners of the universe as well."

Published April 21, 2010