Hauntingly Beautiful Movie of the Sun...

[KarenMichelle Lane]

NASA Releases Movie of Sun's Canyon of Fire

 

The full story is found here: http://spaceref.com/space-weather-2/nasa-releases-movie-of-suns-canyon-of-fire.html

It is astonishing that a photon, once emitted, takes from 17,000 - 44,000 years to free itself from the core of the sun to start it's journey to light the Earth.

[PeterCanessa Oh]

Photons, by definition, move at the speed of light.  Although gravity gets you down it's the bureaucracy and paperwork that takes them all that time to start the journey.

Aircraft are much faster than sailing ships.  One used to board one's ship by going to the docks and walking aboard.  Now you have to go to the airport at least 2 hours before your flight check-in time (in the UK), which is itself about 30 minutes before expected departure.  Bring passport, other ID, visas, etc. etc.  I think you can see that the inevitable logic of this means the faster the form of travel the more officialdom will do to prevent you going anywhere ;-0

 

[Aislin Ceawlin]

Thank you for posting this. Truly awesome to see.

[Nyll Bergbahn]

Great video clip Karen. Thanks for posting it. All those years to get to the surface and then a mere eight minutes to reach us!

While this video is the result of two days satellite data at various wavelengths, even just visually observing the Sun in real time through a hydrogen-alpha solar telescope can be an amazing experience. It depends how active the Sun is of course but it's believed to be very close to solar maximum at the moment so very active and there are usually filaments, sunspots and wonderful prominences of various types and sizes to be seen and of course the gorgeous orange peel look of the Sun's surface. If extremely lucky, an observer may catch a flare, sadly I haven't as yet but I can watch prominences change shape and even detach from the sun over a period of hours.

I recall well the first time I observed the Sun through a pair of h-alpha solar binoculars and was amazed by the view. Now I own a SolarMax II h-alpha solar telescope http://www.optcorp.com/ci-smt60-10-solarmax-ii-60-h-alpha-solar-0-7a-telescope-bf10.html and use it whenever I can.

If there is an astronomy club near you, enquire if it runs public solar observing days through h-alpha telescopes and if so, go along and have a look. Depending on what solar scopes the members have (preferably 60mm-90mm), you should get a view like this: http://www.space.com/15679-sun-observing-solar-eclipse-venus-transit.html

[Aislin Ceawlin]

I'm jealous I"VE ALWAYS WANTED A TELESCOPE. (APOLOGIES< MY KEYBOARD IS MESSING UP)

[Ceka Cianci]

i love this stuff..awesome  video..thank you =)

 

here is a video of the earth in the past 30 years..photos taken by lansat..

you can use this feature in google earth as well..

 

it's pretty wild ..

 

Earth at night..