Outages, outages, outages

Power outages caused by inclement inclement weather in the DC area are causing outages of many web servers and data services.  We apologize for any inconvenience. 

[UPDATE:  Power has been restored, but we expect some interruptions in services over the next couple of days as the SDO server undergoes maintenance.]

Computer Scans Occurring - Expect Temporary Outages

Our data server is undergoing scans and maintenance, so users may experience temporary outages and some data flows are being interrupted.  We apologize for any inconvenience.

EVE Rocket Launch scheduled for June 23

The next launch of the EVE underflight calibration sounding rocket payload is planned for June 23, 2012 at 13:00 MDT (window 13:00 - 13:30 MDT) (3:00pm EDT) from the White Sands Missile Range. This flight's primary purpose is to provide the third underflight calibration for the SDO EVE satellite instrument.  Good luck to the EVE time for another successful flight!  [UPDATE:  The launch and recovery went well, and all of the measurements appear to have been successful.  Congratulations!]

 See movies of the last EVE underflight

Where Have All the Sunspots Gone?

It is hard to believe we are in solar maximum when todays' sunspot number is 13 or 14. In this HMI continuum image we can see a tiny active region sitting isolated in the middle of the Sun. If it fades we will have a spotless Sun. The AR doesn't even have a number yet! But as the northern hemisphere fades from maximum, the southern hemisphere has still not reached solar maximum. If you look at an AIA 193 image you can clearly see the polar coronal hole is still open. We are still hopin' for some more fireworks from Solar Cycle 24.

Dynamic Trio

SDO is watching as a trio of large sunspots begins to rotate out of view (June 18-19, 2012) after spewing out numerous solar flares and coronal mass ejections.  The regions no longer appear to be growing, but it is likely that the decaying region will continue to produce eruptions for months to come.

 

View movie (mp4)

New Picture of the Week

Twin M-class Solar Flares

Although visually it only looks like a single flare, sensitive scientific instruments indicated that these were actually two flares very close together (June 13, 2012) from Active Region 1504.  At 12:47 UT a M1.5 solar flare started and only five minutes later a M1.9 flare erupted from the same active region. The M1.5 flare peaked at 14:08 and ended at 15:00 UT. The M1.9 flare peaked at 14:35 and ended at 15:56 UT.  The image and video clips were taken in extreme ultraviolet light.  Indicators show that the coronal mass ejection associated with these flares might impact Earth a few days later.

  Link to Quicktime Movie View Movie (QT)

Venus Transit is Over, Site is Online

The Venus Transit ended early last Wednesday morning. Here is an image of Venus exiting the solar corona in AIA 193. Many thanks to the people who made the data display possible, especially to our Data Meister Phil Scherrer at Stanford University.
The VenusTransit.gsfc.nasa.gov website is a permanent source of images of the 2012 transit of Venus. Although it was briefly offline this weekend, we have re-enabled the website and you can once again look at the images and movies.
Next goal is a posting about how the diffraction pattern of AIA created the ghosts in the EUV images during the transit.

Venus as you've never seen it before!!

 Watch SDO movies of Venus at http://venustransit.gsfc.nasa.gov and catch a NASA webcast at http://sunearthday.nasa.gov/transitofvenus/

AIA Images Back to Normal

AIA images are back to normal on the SDO website.

AIA Images are Currently Unavailable

AIA images are having some problems with labeling. We are working to resolve the problem.

Venus Is In LASCO C2!

Venus is getting ever closer to the Sun as it moves towards tomorrows transit. Here is the view as it enters images from SoHO's LASCO C2 coronagraph. The type of science we will do with SDO during the transit is a story at the NASA SDO webpage.
SDO images of the transit will be available at our dedicated website.