Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Picturing Our Star

The surface of the sun. From the NASA APOD website - one of my daily reads...

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU CLICK THE PHOTO TO ENLARGE


Spicules: Jets on the Sun


Credit: K. Reardon (Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, INAF) IBIS, DST, NSO
Explanation: Imagine a pipe as wide as a state and as long as the Earth. Now imagine that this pipe is filled with hot gas moving 50,000 kilometers per hour. Further imagine that this pipe is not made of metal but a transparent magnetic field. You are envisioning just one of thousands of young spicules on the active Sun. Pictured above is one of the highest resolution image yet of these enigmatic solar flux tubes. Spicules line the above frame of solar active region 11092 that crossed the Sun last month, but are particularly evident converging on the sunspot on the lower left. Time-sequenced images have recently shown that spicules last about five minutes, starting out as tall tubes of rapidly rising gas but eventually fading as the gas peaks and falls back down to the Sun. What determines the creation and dynamics of spicules remains a topic of active research.

4 comments:

  1. My mind has now been properly boggled. Thank you :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. My teenage son loves you for this find!

    ReplyDelete
  3. That looks like the shag carpet in the family room of the house I grew up in!

    ReplyDelete
  4. There is no way the sun looks like that. It is yellow like buttercups with spokes coming out the sides just like I painted as a kid. This reminds of the NASA conspiracy to pretend men could walk on the moon. They are just making stuff up.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.