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Stereoscopic anaglyphs are big images, with low compression, because they need reliable colours that work with red/cyan filters. If your connection is slow the pictures may not show up and you will need to reload the page.
CONTENTS STEREO ultraviolet Hinode X-ray Basic information Links
Return of solar activity 2009-10
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Ultraviolet images of the sun from STEREO missionSunspot in 3D, also H alpha versus visible light Prominences in coronal cavities Erupted out of the cavity Magnified view of a cavity Full size view (large file) Coronal smoke stack also spicules and prominences in 3D Prominences in 3D. Full sun view (large file) Solar flares May 2007 - GOES class CBefore the first flare: Stereoscopic anaglyph, May 1st and 2nd, showing stressed flux tubes above the sun-spot. Also coronal "pillars." Flare 20070502 showing diffraction spikes. Solar flare May 5, 2007: post flare loop and "solar tsunami" - a sunspot-related filament eruption. Includes subtraction also 3d movie (900kb) 2D Flash movie (2.09mb) and H-alpha gif movie by Gema Araujo. Interpretation Jan Janssens Difference between Moreton wave, EIT wave, solar tsunami and CME Solar flare May 16, 2007 20070516. Includes a gif, anaglyphic, stereoscopic movie of the flare EIT shock wave. 20070609 STEREO during M class flare Stereoscopic technical problems of the STEREO mission
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Use red/cyan 3D goggles to see the sun stereoscopically
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Earth is only a dot . |
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/NRL/GSFC, Anaglyph by John Wattie
There are a few prominences projecting from the solar edge. Prominences are relatively cool plasma, supported above the photosphere in a magnetic cavity at the junction line between magnetic domains of opposite polarity. cavities in 3D . On the solar face in H-alpha images, a prominence is seen as a dark filament, On 304Å ultraviolet images, disc filaments are hard to see. Filaments show better in 3D, because they sit above the surrounding plasma. 304Å images show a lot of "bubbles" (not a recognised term - peculiar to kiwizone!) These "bubbles" are a pain when sequential SOHO images are converted to 3D, because after 6 hours they have changed so much that stereoscopic correlation fails. STEREO images are taken simultaneously by the two satellites and now, at last, I can see bubbles in 3D. The "bubbles" seem to form above super-granule boundaries on the photosphere, where the magnetic field is concentrated. The convecting plasma (ionised gas), which boils up to make the middle of super-granules on the photosphere, sweeps the magnetic field lines to the granule boundary, before sinking back into the solar convection zone. In the process the magnetic field lines become concentrated and jam together in the "cracks" between adjacent super-granules, forcing spicules of plasma up into the chromosphere. Others say the spicules are forced up by sound waves (see helioseismology). Rather higher up, it seems to me, these spicules probably heat the transient "bubbles" in the coronal transition zone . Skylab pictures in multiple wavelengths around the temperature of the transition zone revealed these bubbles were really vertical columns of plasma, rather than round bubbles. Study this 3D picture, which also reveals the bubbles have depth. |
Where the coronal plasma gets even hotter than shown in ultraviolet, it emits X-rays. So the X-ray sun looks bigger than the Ultraviolet sun. The visible sun is smaller than both of them.
The left hand active region included a pair of sunspots which produced a solar flare 1 day later. Black coronal holes show well in x-ray. In 3D we can look through holes in the high "clouds" to see x-ray bright spots lower down. Bright spots are not related to active regions. They turn on and off, so the spots we see after 12 hours are not necessarily the same spots in the two images used for the stereo pair, as you can tell by blinking each eye in turn.
Even at sunspot minimum, magnetic storms and auroras occur on earth. Hinode (Solar B) is a single satellite, not a pair of satellites. Stereoscopic images are only possible by waiting for the sun to rotate. Stereoscopic SOHO images on this web site and H alpha 3D images taken by amateur solar photographers depend on solar rotation for stereoscopic parallax. Stereoscopic depth impression depends on the time between images. For the 2006 Hinode image, I used a 12 hour pause (about 7 degrees solar rotation). The September 2007 image used 6 hours . You can easily see the difference in 3D. Hinode is a Japanese mission developed and launched by ISAS/JAXA, with NAOJ as domestic partner and NASA and STFC (UK) as international partners. It is operated by these agencies in co-operation with ESA and NSC (Norway). |
Sun reactivatesThere has been a long period of solar inactivity (solar minimum) but at last action is beginning again. Note the cold weather of the past couple of years and the rise in cosmic ray activity, which fits with Svensmark's theory on how solar activity determines earth temperatures and CO2 has remarkably little to do with it. September 2009STEREO mission movie of solar prominence from both satellites, 120 degrees apart. Another eruption Other active region movies October 2009Keep an eye on the GOES Xray flux (below). It has been very low for a couple of years, but action has returned and the sun has spots again! January 20102 M class flares: on 19 and 20 January 7 February 2010GOES Xray flux has become very active with 2 M class flares in the last few hours.
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Old stereoscopic anaglyphs from SOHO
Glossary H alpha stereo by solar rotation - disapointing!
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Space Weather NOAA Solar Monitor Sun NOW in H alpha Calgoora (Australia) Big Bear Solar Observatory images :Home page Sun very recently in ultraviolet (SOHO) NSO (USA) Current Solar Map (Belgium) Latest amateur H alpha images Amateur Solar Web Sites Solaemon: Jan Janssens, Belgium, in English.) The sun today (Gema Araujo, Spain, but also in English.)
GOES x-ray flux. (Geostationary weather satellites.)
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