ikenbot:

Moon, Venus, & The Sun

“The Moon and Venus displayed very similar phases yesterday (23 May) almost looking like twins, one heading for the Sun, the other having just performed a remarkable transit wich resulted in the annular eclipse 2 days ago.

The Moon (30’) is still 2 arc minutes smaller than the Sun (32’). The sizes of the 3 bodies are correct but of course not their relative positions. Everything is shot in daylight so I have enhanced the contrast for the Moon and Venus.” — Peter Rosén

Solar Showdown: How Well Do You Know Our Sun?

Many of us take the sun for granted, giving it little thought until it scorches our skin or gets in our eyes. But our star is a fascinating and complex object, a gigantic fusion reactor that gives us life. How much do you know about the sun?

Start The Quiz

ikenbot:

Monster Sunspot Fires Off Powerful Solar Flares

A huge sunspot that dwarfs the Earth is unleashing a series of powerful solar flares as it moves across the surface of the sun, NASA scientists say.

The sunspot AR 1476 was detected by space telescopes on May 5. The huge sunspot is 60,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) across, so large that when it was first seen in views from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft, mission scientists dubbed it a “monster sunspot.”

Earlier this week, space weather scientists predicted the sunspot would erupt with powerful solar flares, and those predictions have since come true. So far, the sunspot has fired off several flares, including a strong solar storm early Thursday (May 10).

“Solar activity has been at high levels for the past 24 hours with multiple M-class solar flares observed,” stated an update Thursday from the Space Weather Prediction Center, a joint service of NOAA and the National Weather Service. Sunspot region AR 1476 was responsible for nearly all of the sun’s storm activity, center officials said.

On Thursday, sunspot AR 1476 unleashed a powerful flare at 12:18 a.m. EDT (0418 GMT) that registered as a class M5.7 eruption. M-class solar flares are medium-strength sun storms that can still unleash powerful blasts of radiation and magnetic solar plasma. So far, the sunspot has not triggered huge explosions from the sun, which scientists call coronal mass ejections.

Continue..

galaxyshmalaxy:

Helios again (by Guillermo Yanez)

quantumaniac:

Earth Will One Day See a Second Sun

Betelgeuse, a red supergiant star located in the Orion constellation, about 640 light-years away from Earth - is preparing to explode via a supernova. When it does, the Earth will have a front-row seat; in fact, the explosion will be so bright that Earth will seem to briefly have two suns in the sky. 

Betelgeuse is one of the brightest and largest stars in our immediate galactic neighborhood - if you dropped it in our Solar System, it would extend all the way out to Jupiter, leaving Earth completely engulfed. In stellar terms, it’s predicted to explode in the very near future. Of course, the conversion from stellar to human terms is pretty extreme, as Betelgeuse is predicted to explode anytime in the next million years.

But still, whether the explosion occurs in 2011 or 1002011 (give or take 640 years for the light to reach Earth), it’s going to make for one of the most unforgettable light shows in our planet’s history. For a few weeks, the supernova will be so bright that there will appear to be two stars in the sky, and night will be indistinguishable from day for much of that time. So don’t count on getting a lot of sleep when Betelgeuse explodes, because the only sensible thing for the world to do will be to throw a weeks-long global supernova party.

Physicist Brad Carter explains what Earth (and hopefully humanity) can look forward to:

“This is the final hurrah for the star. It goes bang, it explodes, it lights up - we’ll have incredible brightness for a brief period of time for a couple of weeks and then over the coming months it begins to fade and then eventually it will be very hard to see at all.”

Although there’ll be no missing the explosion, Carter points out that the vast majority of material shot out from the supernova will pass by Earth completely unnoticed:

“When a star goes bang, the first we will observe of it is a rain of tiny particles called neutrinos. They will flood through the Earth and bizarrely enough, even though the supernova we see visually will light up the night sky, 99 per cent of the energy in the supernova is released in these particles that will come through our bodies and through the Earth with absolutely no harm whatsoever.”

In any event, the Betelgeuse explosion will likely be the most dramatic supernova Earth ever witnesses - well, unless our Sun eventually explodes and destroys our planet, which would probably leave Betelgeuse the runner-up.

Globular

the-star-stuff:

Mega-prominence!

This colossal prominence erupted from the Sun’s eastern limb after the occurrence of a solar flare. The photographer said it was the biggest prominence he had ever seen. The top image is a monochrome shot to which he added color. He made the bottom image an inverse because some people see details in that type of display better.

by Jim Lafferty from Redlands, California

strictlyastronomy:

Spectacular Solar Flare Erupts From The Sun

Magnetic fields on the sun’s northeastern limb erupted around 17:45 UT on April 16th, producing one of the most visually-spectacular explosions in years. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) recorded the blast at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths (above).  Gas heated to nearly a million degrees was blown off the solar surface, following the twisted loops of the Sun’s invisible magnetic field lines.  This happened near the limb, or edge, of the Sun; luckily this means the Earth was shielded from the bulk of the harmful radiation emitted in the event.  On the other hand, it also means it’s unlikely we will see any auroral activity in the next few days as a result.

ikenbot:

Sunday Sun

Copyright: Behyar Bakhshandeh