The Sun in multi wavelengths, taken by the SDO. Image credit Nasa
21st April 2010
Our 4.5 billion year old star is a seething restless cauldron of million degree plasma, big enough to swallow 1.3 million Earth’s in it’s volume. It’s surface is twisted and contorted by millions of north and south poles, this creates a tangled mass of magnetic loops and twists in the plasma, building up colossal stress. Like winding up a rubber band and then releasing it, these loops build up so much pent up energy that they eventually break, creating explosions of material that race outwards. These explosions are called coronal mass ejections, and are a danger to communications on Earth.
Nasa’s new Solar Dynamics Observatory was launched on February 11th this year and is the most advanced observatory ever built to really find out what’s going on in the Sun’s atmosphere, on it’s surface, and under it. The incredible photo above is a multiwavelength, extreme ultraviolet image of the Sun taken by the SDO on March 30th 2010. The blues and greens are the hottest areas greater than 1.799,540 F, a huge arching prominence can also be seen at the upper left.
An artist's impression of Nasa's new Solar Dynamics Observatory. Image credit Nasa
This seriously nifty piece of hardware is extremely high resolution, allowing images to be taken 10 times sharper than a high definition TV camera revealing details as small as 350 kilometres across. The Sun’s tortuous magnetic field system, as well as it’s atmosphere can now be studied in minute detail in a mission to last five years, resulting in a better understanding of how our star effects the Earth’s systems.
It’s easy to forget the sheer unimaginable power of our middle aged star, containing the lion’s share of all the mass in the solar system a whopping 99.86% of it. In one second the Sun kicks out more energy than has been used in all of human history. Nasa’s new Solar Dynamic Observatory will hopefully give us an even better understanding of the immense power at the centre of our solar system.
