NASA's New Eye on the Sun

by The Environmentalist Staff

NASA's new Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), launched on February 11, 2010, has returned remarkable images of the sun.  

← An ultraviolet view  of the sun.  

A full-disk multiwavelength extreme ultraviolet image of the sun taken by SDO on March 30, 2010. False colors trace different gas temperatures. Reds are relatively cool (about 60,000 Kelvin, or 107,540 F); blues and greens are hotter (greater than 1 million Kelvin, or 1,799,540 F). Credit: NASA/Goddard/SDO AIA Team

The new observatory gives us a view of the sun in dynamic formats and is referred to, by NASA, as one of the most advanced spacecrafts ever launched.

"These initial images show a dynamic sun that I had never seen in more than 40 years of solar research,” said Richard Fisher, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "SDO will change our understanding of the sun and its processes, which affect our lives and society. This mission will have a huge impact on science, similar to the impact of the Hubble Space Telescope on modern astrophysics.”

More on NASA's SDO project here:  http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sdo/main/index.html

LABELS: GISS, NASA, SCIENCE, SDO