What Lies Beneath (July 30, 2010)

Hi-res TIF image (1.4M)

Quicktime Movie: Large ( 10M), Small (2.7M)
MPEG Movie (6.0M)

By fading back and forth between a filtered white light image of the Sun and a magnetic image (in black and white), we can show the correlation of sunspots to their magnetic underpinnings (July 26, 2010). The pair of medium-sized sunspots appears as dark splotches in the lower right portion of the Sun. These are the sites of intense magnetic fields emerging from the Sun's interior. We can also detect what the Sun is doing magnetically. The magnetogram image reveals the sunspots as clusters of activity, with the paired black and white areas indicating north and south magnetic polarity. Note the correlation of the two kinds of images. The magnetically active regions in which sunspots are found are often the sources of solar storms. Both the white light continuum images and the magnetogram images were taken by the Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) instrument on SOHO.

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.