NASA Probe Sends Home Dazzling Pictures of the Sun

Amazing images from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory will enhance our understanding of the sun's impact on our chemistry and climate

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This glittering turquoise image reveals our sun in a dramatic and utterly unexpected way. Taken by the newly launched Nasa probe, the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the photograph shows superheated material swirling across the sun's surface in unprecedented detail.

At the top left of the image there is a solar prominence, a huge loop of plasma, that is being blasted into space. Scientists estimate its temperature at around 60,000 celsius. This is relatively cool, it transpires. The rest of the sun's surface depicted here, which has been given false colouring in blues and greens, is made up of plasma that is around one million degrees celsius.

Launched on 11 February on an Atlas rocket from Cape Canaveral, the Observatory is the most advanced spacecraft ever designed to study the sun and will operate for the next five years, leading to a new understanding of the role that the sun plays in earth's atmospheric chemistry and climate, say space scientists.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/76d05ddea24e.jpg[/atsimg]An extreme ultraviolet image, using false colours to trace different gas temperatures,
of the sun taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) on 30 March. Photograph: NASA/Reuters

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Well the pictures speak for themselves. I love all the SoHo images. These are just as good and in some ways better. I love the different set of color spectrum in those first few images.

They are really fascinating pictures, but I think they've been covered a few times here already considering they're about a month old.

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reply to post by serbsta


I searched 3 ways to Wednesday too...thanks

reply to post by serbsta


And the original (and best lol):

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