Sunspot 1089

Sunspot 1089 has grown so large, it can now be seen without the aid of a solar telescope. On July 21st, Gil Esquerdo "spotted it" as the sun set over Kitt Peak, Arizona:



Esquerdo was located on adjacent Mt. Hopkins. "Twice a year, the sun sets behind Kitt Peak as seen from the ridge on Mt. Hopkins and the Whipple Observatory," he says. "Our monsoon thunderstorms cooperated long enough for me to photograph the event."

Kitt Peak is home to more than a dozen world-class telescopes, and many of their silhouettes can be seen in Esquerdo's photo. Highlights include the triangular profile of the great McMath-Pierce solar telescope and the towering dome of the Mayall 4-meter telescope.

Caution: Although sunspot 1089 is large enough to see with the naked eye, looking for it is not recommended. Even when sunlight is dimmed by clouds and haze, you can still suffer permanent eye damage by staring too long at the unfiltered sun. Be careful.

Article republished from spaceweather.com

Sunspot 1089 as seen from SDO:

LASP UPS Repair

UPS Repair work is completed, and normal processing has resumed. Missing products will be available as soon as possible.

SDO Composite Movies

We have added a new addition to the SDO data browser. Starting on the 2010-07-16, the four composite images featured on the "Sun Now" page are being time stamped and archived on our site at a 15 minute cadence. These are available for browsing and downloading.

• http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/aiahmi/browse.php

NASA Image of the Day

On July 11, 2010, the new moon passed directly in front of the sun, causing a total solar eclipse in the South Pacific. In this image, the solar eclipse is shown in gray and white from a photo provided by the Williams College Expedition to Easter Island and was embedded with an image of the sun's outer corona taken by the Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) on the SOHO spacecraft and shown in red false color.

LASCO uses a disk to blot out the bright sun and the inner corona so that the faint outer corona can be monitored and studied. Further, the dark silhouette of the moon was covered with an image of the sun taken in extreme ultraviolet light at about the same time by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly on the Solar Dynamics Observatory. The composite brings out the correlation of structures in the inner and outer corona.

Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Williams College Eclipse Expedition

SDO related videos from Discovery News

We found and would like to share a pair of back dated videos from Discovery News about SDO.

SDO Captures Eruptions on Sun

New high-definition footage from the Solar Dynamic Observatory shows coronal mass ejections, huge eruptions of plasma blasting into space before showering back down on the sun's surface. Discovery Space producer Ian O'Neill explains the phenomenon.

• View the video

SDO Shines Light on Sun

NASA hopes the Solar Dynamic Observatory will turn its scientists into space weathermen. Discovery Channel?s Dave Mosher and Jorge Ribas learn more about the satellite that's set to launch in December.

• View the video

Calibration Maneuver Days

Today and tomorrow there will be many blank images of the Sun as SDO does a series of calibration maneuvers designed to understand how the instruments work. The EVE cruciform maneuver is running today; tomorrow we run a few others for all three instrument. These maneuvers are used to track changes in the instruments as they sit in space. We will return to 24/7 data collection late tomorrow (July 15, 2010).

A new addition to "The Sun Now" page

We have added a new composite image to "The Sun Now" page. This composite image consists of the latest AIA 171 and the latest HMI magnetogram images. Sizes include: 4096, 2048, 1024, 512, and 256.

• http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/