Marching Spots

A video clip shows an interesting alignment of three good-sized sunspot groups that present the potential for producing solar storms are rotating to the center of the Sun where any eruptions from them could affect us here at Earth (July 28-29, 2011). The lead group has the kind of magnetic field that could produce a large (X-class) flare. The images were taken by SDO's HMI Intensitygram that shows the Sun as it would be seen in filtered white light. This is likely the best parade of sunspot groups we have seen with SDO. And take note of this: each of these sunspots is larger than Earth. Let's see if any fireworks ensue.

... (more info)

SDO Weekly Report for July 22, 2011

On Wednesday July 20 SDO did two maneuvers, an EVE field of view from 1315-1600 UT and an HMI off point from 1630-1910 UT. During these maneuvers the near real time images look cut-off and some data may have been lost. An example of a shifted image is shown on the left. Unlike earlier maneuvers, where the image moved around in the picture, the NRT software is centering the image and we see the edge of the CCD as a straight line.

On 7/16 the MOC backup Real-Time system lost 3 hours of S-band data due to a line hit causing a socket disconnect. The primary string was unaffected so there was no impact.

We have been told that the electricity will be shut off in the room with the Goddard SDO computers this weekend. This means the website will be down from 6:00 am to as late as 3:00 pm ET. The instrument websites are not affected by this outage and neither is the satellite. Sorry for the inconvenience.

SDO maneuvers - July 13

SDO will again be off-pointing away from the Sun today, July 13, so don't be surprised to see partial Sun images, streaks, or no Sun at all! This is a planned maneuver that happens four times per year in order to help the EVE instrument more fully understand its pointing and wavelength calibration. These quarterly events are referred to as "EVE Cruciforms" as the spacecraft is pointed at various angles in pitch (up and down) and then in yaw (left to right) that make a cross-like pointing pattern centered on the Sun.

AIA captures a comet!

AIA captured an incredible movie of a comet's demise as it entered the solar corona:
AIA 171 Å movie (3.9 MB .mov)


Here's the movie of the comet observed by SOHO LASCO (11 MB .mov)

(For those of you who are curious, here's some information about sungrazing comets.)