The SDO Website is Down

Due to anticipated power grid problems caused by Hurricane Sandy the SDO website has been shutdown. We regret the inconvenience. The website should return tomorrow. All SDO data is sent to the ground and stored at the data centers.

Current SDO images can be found at LMSAL's Sun Today website and the JSOC at Stanford. EVE data is available at the EVE space weather data page.
The level of solar and space weather activity is low and still being monitored by the GOES spacecraft. Check out their website at SWPC.gov
Stay safe and dry; hopefully we will be back online soon.

AR 11598 Lets Go With an X1.8 Flare

Last night AR 11598 unleashed an X1.8 flare, reaching peak brightness at 10/23/2012 0322 UTC in AIA 94. This active region has produced quite a few flares since rotating into the view of SDO. With sunspot number currently at 86, perhaps even more active is at hand.

Data Handling Problems are Fixed

The data handling problems have been fixed and data is flowing normally.

Some Images are Delayed

Due to problems at the SDO ground station some HMI data was not being transmitted correctly this weekend. Another anomaly at Stanford has introduced further problems. Once the computers are all fixed and talking to each other the data flow will return to normal.

Bright Flare Today

We had a bright flare, exceeding an M5 today at 1815 UTC. It can be seen as the rise in the ESP 0.1-7 nm channel at the top of this plot. The active region that flared was on the approaching limb of the Sun.

October 17, FOV and Flatfield Manevuers

SDO successfully wobbled around yesterday and completed the EVE field-of-view and AIA/HMI Flatfield maneuvers. Here is an example of an AIA 335 image during the maneuvers. You should notice that the CCD does not receive light in little segments near the corners of the image. These cutouts are caused by masks in the telescope that block the light and make a more or less round image region on the CCD. This was done because little light from the Sun goes to those parts of the detectors and we squeeze a little more bandwidth out of the telemetry downlink by knowing those triangles have no signal.

October 10, the EVE Cruciform Maneuver

Last Wednesday SDO performed an EVE Cruciform maneuver, where the spacecraft points up and down and then side to side. This allows the EVE scientist to track the calibration of the instrument and provide the accurate EUV spectral irradiances they are famous for. But it also causes some of the images from AIA and HMI to be blurred (such as this one in AIA 193).
Next maneuver is tomorrow, October 17, when we do the EVE field-of-view and HMI/AIA flatfield maneuvers.