Close Encounter Of The Sun Kind

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NASA
CONJUNCTION: Yesterday the International Space Station (ISS) had a close encounter--with sunspot 1089:



Moving at 17,000 mph, the ISS flitted across the solar disk in less than half a second. Snap! Stephen W. Ramsden of Madison, Georgia, caught the space station just as it was passing by sunspot 1089. "I used an Explore Scientific 127mm APO, a Lunt Solar Wedge, and a DMK41 digital camera," he says.

Look around the space station's silhouette. The graininess of the image there is not a defect. It's a real characteristic of the sun's surface, caused by the boiling motion of hot plasma. Researchers call it "granulation," and it is particularly obvious in contrast with the sharp outlines of the ISS. Ready for your own solar transit?

A lot of sunspot activity lately and now a close encounter. They also lost an item from the space station today (thread on ATS). With the increased acitivity of the sun I was wondering if this will put the space station and satellites in jeoprady.

S & F. While the sun is going through a rampage at this point in time I doubt that anything disastrous will actually happen. Nice thread though. Keep it up.

spaceweather.com...



N spot



www.calsky.com...




[edit on 27-7-2010 by Zeta Reticulan]

So would it melt the hull or are we just in danger if the ISS hit it directly?

reply to post by Hutchie


Not an expert but I think it would take an M or X Flare to do significant damage.



[edit on 27-7-2010 by crazydaisy]

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July 29, 2010
TOWERING BLAST: Yesterday, a magnetic filament curling over the southeastern limb of thee sun became unstable and erupted. The blast produced a towering curlicue prominence that "Dr Seuss would have loved," says Alan Friedman, who sends this picture from his backyard observatory in Buffalo, New York:



"It towered more than 200,000 miles above the stellar surface," says Friedman.

Astronomers around the world watched the structure twist, curl, and eventually fling itself into space over a six hour period. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory had the best view of all. Onboard cameras recorded an IMAX-quality movie of the event ... coming soon to a theatre near you? NASA is planning an IMAX movie about SDO, and this eruption will probably make the cut.

Another amazing image from Nasa - Blazing Sun

Cool picutres you posted crazydaisy! S & F.

There is a link on Space Weather that has some cool videos of today's blast.

spaceweather.com...

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER ERUPTION: This morning, the sun produced another eruption just as impressive as yesterday's 'Towering Blast.' It occured in the vicinity of new sunsot 1092. Click here and here for first-look movies from the Solar Dynamics Observatory.

reply to post by lasertaglover


Thanks - the sun is putting on a brillant performance - amazing that they can get such great images.

reply to post by crazydaisy


Space Weather posted a cool 12 MB gif of the blast from today.

Here:

spaceweather.com...

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NASA
COMPLEX ERUPTION ON THE SUN: This morning around 0855 UT, Earth orbiting satellites detected a C3-class solar flare. The origin of the blast was sunspot 1092. At about the same time, an enormous magnetic filament stretching across the sun's northern hemisphere erupted. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the action.




The timing of these events suggest they are connected, and a review of SDO movies strengthens that conclusion. Despite the ~400,000 km distance between them, the sunspot and filament seem to erupt together; they are probably connected by long-range magnetic fields. In this movie (171 Å), a shadowy shock wave (a "solar tsunami") can be seen emerging from the flare site and rippling across the northern hemisphere into the filament's eruption zone. That may have helped propel the filament into space.

In short, we have just witnessed a complex global eruption involving almost the entire Earth-facing side of the sun.

A coronal mass ejection (CME) produced by the event is heading directly for Earth: SOHO movie. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras when it arrives on or about August 3rd.

So is it normal for this flare to make the sun look orange? All this afternoon, I've been gawking at the sun's direction because it looked like a K-class star instead of our beloved G. Now it looks as red as M.