Can anyone explain these images for me?

I have stumbled upon this picture of 2 images taken within an hour of each other..



can anybody tell me why the amount of content is increased from one image to the next?

Link

perhaps the sun gave more light for a second which caused that? im just guessing.

You are looking at the suns corona from the SOHO spacecraft. The suns corona is a sort of atmosphere.

Now if you are reffering to the anomolies that are away from the corona, well, there are MANY threads that speculate on just what those anomolies are.


You should also search for info on solar flares and solar activity.

[edit on 3/18/05 by Kidfinger]

Man, those SOHO pics are beautiful aren't they? Anyway, the image on top just shows the sun's corona, a sort of aptmosphere of ionized gas unless I'm mistaken. The image on the bottom shows a particle storm impacting the CCD, the digital capture device used to interpret radiation and turn it into a picture.

The tiny dots are energized protons, ejected from the sun at high speed. They smack into the CCD (I think that's what it's called) and cause the shotgun blast effect you see. It happens all the time, pretty common occurence.

The object to the right in the top photo is probably one of the inner planets, not sure which one.

SOHO comes back with way wierder images than that. I wish I still had the link to the post I did a long time ago, showing what appeared to be a space craft's trail entering and exiting in the same frame, and the other one that appeared to show Saturn shooting some kind of beam at the sun. Maybe someone else has the thread bookmarked or wants to search for it, it's long gone off my list since nobody was replying...

SOHO anomalies are a lot of fun, I think there was even a dedicated thread on ATS for a while to post pictures and talk about them. Not sure about that though. Maybe ask Cmdrkeenkid.

I'm guessing it was a longer exposure time for the second picture, compared to the first. Notice all the extra stars? Of course, if this were the case, I would expect the Sun to be even more washed out.

You said that these were taken a few hours from eachother, from the photos time index, more than a day passed between shots.

Originally posted by iori_komei
You said that these were taken a few hours from eachother, from the photos time index, more than a day passed between shots.

sorry, you are right, it was 5hrs..

apologies.

interesting. little side observation: the date format, thats commonly used in China in other parts of asia. Just a random factoid

Definitely does look like the second photo had a longer exposure time. All the points of light are the same in both, but in the second they are all dragged slightly making them seem more intense.

The first picture shows a CME - a Coronal Mass Ejection (a solar flare if you prefer).

As WyrdOne said earlier in this thread, the second picture is the effect of that CME as the ejecta pass by the CCD. This stream of particles are what causes the aurora as they impact on Earth's upper atmosphere.

There was a very impressive CME between around the 17th of January 2005 - (maybe a day either side) and a resulting, very heavy particle storm, (which I believe knocked out a couple of communication sat's too). I'll see if I can find any images of that CME.

You might like to check out Spaceweather.com for a little background reading.

There are many more of these pictures located at the source of the ones already posted. lasco-www.nrl.navy.mil...
This is what apparently look these pictures. (it was mostly covered already by people in this thread) lasco-www.nrl.navy.mil...

These are neat pictures, good find.