Saturday, October 18, 2008

Awesome

Can you figure out what this is?

Thanks to a tip from Dan, this is one of several amazing photos of the sun found in this article at Boston.com, the home of the Boston Globe. The caption reads:
Image of an active solar region taken on July 24, 2002 near the eastern limb of the Sun. The image highlights the three-dimensional nature of the photosphere when seen at these large angles. The structures in the dark sunspots in the upper central area of the image show distinct elevation above the dark "floor" of the sunspot. The height of the structures has been estimated by Dr. Bruce Lites of the High Altitude Observatory to be between 200 and 450 km. The smallest resolvable features in the image are about 70 km in size. There are also numerous bright "faculae" visible on the edges of granules that face towards the observer. (Prof. Goran Scharmer/Dr. Mats G. Löfdahl/Institute for Solar Physics of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences)
Here's another.  Be sure to check out all 21 pictures on the site.


4 comments:

Mooselet said...

I love all things astronomy, especially the pictures. You should check out the Astronomy Pic of the Day site - I have a link over on my blog; it's spectacular! My wallpaper on the desktop is made from images from that site.

Anonymous said...

Amazing pictures indeed!

I hope you're enjoying Aus... I've had the expat experience a couple of times (and all the trials and triumphs that go with it) and would do it all again if I could, I learned a lot. Summer in Brisbane will feel almost as hot as those pictures look :)

Thanks for your comments too... I still have a few more days, Thursday this week is the due date for honours theses at QUT. I have a couple more days to get the word count down!

Darron said...

I found the debate about science vs. God interesting after viewing the pics.

The Prof said...

Thanks for the tip, Mooselet!

Hi Megan...I'm glad you have nearly finished your honours ordeal.

D., if we all get to spend time up close with sights like this I think we'd be blown away and forget about spending our precious time thinking about Britney and Paris...