One of the first movies from NASA’s SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory) Mission this sequence of images gives us a first glimpse at the kinds of science SDO will open up to solar astronomers. On April 8, 2010 the sun produced a relatively small solar flare and a blast wave (often called an EIT wave after the EIT telescope on SOHO or a solar tsunami). The blast wave shows us the motion of some of the solar material that made up the resulting Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) that traveled toward Earth. The video shows both zoomed in and zoomed out views of the solar eruption in multiple wavelengths of Extreme Ultraviolet light. The images are labeled with their corresponding wavelengths of light in units of Angstroms. Some images contain single wavelengths and others are composites of multiple wavelengths. The video shows the amazing detail SDO will now afford us to better understand Space Weather Events and solar storms like this one. Space Weather can have a huge impact on our technologically dependent, space traveling society as we live in the outer atmosphere of our star, the sun.
About C. Alex Young, Ph.D.
