PICK OF THE WEEK
Pick of The Week
A little something for everyone (July 24, 2003)
Hi-res TIF image (4.1M)
Movies:
MPEG: Large (2.9M)
Small (850K)
Quicktime: Large (1.1M), Small (391K)
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For two days this week (July 20 - 22) the scientists controlling SOHO
decided to take an image of the Sun every 12 minutes in the EIT 304
Ångstroms wavelength. At this higher than usual frame rate, many
details of activity can be observed. (A spectral line of
singly-ionized helium at 304 Ångstroms shows the state of the solar
plasma at roughly 60,000 C.) Most obviously, about four active
regions (seen as brighter areas) move from near the center of the
disk to the right as the Sun rotates -these regions manage to pop off
a few bursts of activity. Otherwise, nothing spectacular occurs,
except for numerous small flares (rapid releases of radiative
energy), eruptive prominences (ejections of relatively cool material
into the much hotter and more tenuous corona), and macrospicules
(shorter-lived ejections in the Sun's polar regions that "run out of
steam" and fall back to the solar surface)."
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SOHO began its Weekly Pick some time after sending a weekly image or video clip to the American Museum of Natural History (Rose Center) in New York City. There, the SOHO Weekly Pick is displayed with some annotations on a large plasma display. If your institution would also like to receive the same Weekly Pick from us for display (usually in Photoshop or QuickTime format), please send your inquiry to steele.hill@gsfc.nasa.gov. |
