Yesterday on spaceweather.com there was an interesting photo. ART OR SCIENCE? Researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, have created an unprecedented 3D supercomputer model of a sunspot. The result is not only scientifically informative, but also a thing of beauty:
To create the virtual sunspot, researchers programmed NCAR's IBM bluefire supercomputer with the laws of magnetohydrodynamics, sprinkled in some ground-based observations of actual sunspots, and hit "go." The bluefire is capable of 76 trillion calculations per second; even so, the program took weeks to complete. The final model contains 1.8 billion points and covers a 3D domain 31,000 miles by 62,000 miles wide and 3,700 miles deep.Physcists are now studying movies of the virtual sunspot to develop new insights into the dynamic behavior of these planet-sized behemoths. More than one onlooker has gasped in amazement when shown the surprisely lovely subsurface structure of the 'spot.
Is it art or science? You decide.
Well, I don't know if that is art of science, but I do think it's pretty. I also think it causes me to think more about the sun and what is going on up there, way out in space, and how it effects my simple little life here on earth.
All that roiling and boiling, exploding and rotating. All the rays of different sorts that are being thrown out into space: gamma rays, x-rays, ultra-violet rays and a bunch more that I know nothing about. Magnetic fields, radiation, hydrogen gasses, currents and 'jet streams'. Oh my!
The more I read about our Sun, the more I realize that we take it too much for granted. It's up there in the sky every day. When I'm too hot I complain about it's heat. When it's cloudy too long I complain about it being missing. I long for it's light, but stand outside in the shade whenever possible.
The sun is there every day, day after day after day for millennium. Without it we could not live. Yet I rarely think about it in a positive way. Shame on me! The sun is one of God's good gifts to us!
I need to start thanking Him for it's light, it's heat, it's effect on our seasons - not complaining all the time about being too hot, or too dark, or whatever.
Recently we have been in a deep Solar Minimum - a time when there have been very few sunspots. Sunspots? you ask - what's that? Spots on the sun! heh heh. If you are interested in what they are, what they do and why scientists keep track of them, I encourage you too look them up on the internet. Sunspots are very important, if for no other reason than they are what help the earth have Northern Lights. Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis up in Alaska, well, they are one of the natural wonders of this earth that I love the very most, am very fascinated with them, could stand out in the frigid cold and watch them for hours. Without sunspots - no aurora. Therefore, bring on the sunspots! Away with this Solar Minimum! But all in God's good time - there is a season for everything under the sun!!
Photo yesterday of sun without sunspots:
Photo a few days ago of an unusual line of sunspots:
Can you see them, way down there in the far left 'corner' of the sun but in the center of the photo? Those things are HUGE. You could fit many earths into each one, but they look so tiny on the face of the sun.And today, on Astronomy Photo of the Day is this photo:
Now seriously, could you tell that the sun is smaller and farther away today than it was two weeks ago? :) ;)And one last thing to click on, if you are so inclined. A way cool YouTube video of a solar explosion. Wow! Just think - I used to believe it was just a big yellow ball of fire up in the sky, like a big beach ball all smooth and passive and unchanging. Now I know different! (updated - there is another video after this one - scroll down. Both are short ones.)
Why does the Sun flare? Unpredictably, our Sun unleashes tremendous flares expelling hot gas into the Solar System that can affect satellites, astronauts, and power grids on Earth. This close up of an active region on the Sun that produced a powerful X-class flare was captured by the orbiting TRACE satellite. Clicking on the image should bring up a movie that shows the evolution of Active Region 9906 over about four hours. The glowing gas flowing around the relatively stable magnetic field loops above the Sun's photosphere has a temperature of over ten million degrees Celsius. These flows occurred after violently unstable magnetic reconnection events above the Sun produced the flare. Many things about solar active regions are not well understood including the presence of dark regions that appear to move inward during the movie.
Ok - two last things. I just found this YouTube video from National Geographic. It's only 4 minutes long and more explanitory.
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