Video Credit: NASA
A Solar Eruption in 3D
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Tag Archives: STEREO
Another Flare
During a December, 2013, solar flare, three satellites watched a current sheet form. This animation shows four views of the flare from the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory, and JAXA’s Hinode. The current sheet is a long, thin structure, especially visible in the views on the left. Those two animations depict light emitted by material with higher temperatures, so they better show the extremely hot current sheet.
A current sheet is a very fast, very flat flow of electrically-charged material, extremely thin compared to its length and width. Current sheets form when two oppositely-aligned magnetic fields come in close contact, creating very high magnetic force.
Image Credits: NASA / JAXA
The Far Side of the Sun
Video Credit: NASA
The Comet Fizzles
Comet ISON fell apart as it went past the Sun. Here’s the view from the STEREO A and SOHO satellites.
Video Credit: NASA
Comets!
Comet Encke and Comet ISON are both inbound toward the Sun. Both are now within the field of view of NASA’s STEREO-A sun-monitoring satellite.
Image Credit: NASA
The Comet
Naked-eye Comet PanSTARRS continues to rise in northern hemisphere skies. I haven’t had clear skies to see the comet yet, but many have been forunate to see it with a young crescent Moon near sunset. This remarkable picture from last Tuesday shows the comet with the Earth in the background as seen from the STEREO Behind spacecraft. That spacecraft is nearly opposite the Sun trailing the Earth in its orbit. The Sun just off the left side of the image. The blob on the left is a huge enormous coronal mass ejection (CME) erupting from the Sun. Of course, the Sun’s CME, comet, and the Earth are all at different distances from the spacecraft—with the comet nearest. The image was processed from two consecutive frames from the spacecraft’s SECCHI Heliospheric Imager, causing the strong shadowing effect for objects that moved from one frame to the next. Objects that were too bright created the sharp vertical lines. Note the complicated feather-like structures in Comet PanSTARRS’s dust tail.
Image Credit: NASA