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This video features stunning clips of the Sun, captured by SDO from each of the five years since SDO’s deployment in 2010. In this movie, watch giant clouds of solar material hurled out into space, the dance of giant loops hovering in the corona, and huge sunspots growing and shrinking on the Sun’s surface.

April 21, 2015 marks the five-year anniversary of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) First Light press conference, where NASA revealed the first images taken by the spacecraft. Since then, SDO has captured amazingly stunning super-high-definition images in multiple wavelengths, revealing new science, and captivating views.

February 11, 2015 marks five years in space for NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which provides incredibly detailed images of the whole Sun 24 hours a day. February 11, 2010, was the day on which NASA launched an unprecedented solar observatory into space. The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) flew up on an Atlas V rocket, carrying instruments that scientists hoped would revolutionize observations of the Sun.

Capturing an image more than once per second, SDO has provided an unprecedentedly clear picture of how massive explosions on the Sun grow and erupt. The imagery is also captivating, allowing one to watch the constant ballet of solar material through the sun’s atmosphere, the corona.

The imagery in this “highlight reel” provide us with examples of the kind of data that SDO provides to scientists. By watching the sun in different wavelengths (and therefore different temperatures, each “seen” at a particular wavelength that is invisible to the unaided eye) scientists can watch how material courses through the corona. SDO captures images of the Sun in 10 different wavelengths, each of which helps highlight a different temperature of solar material. Different temperatures can, in turn, show specific structures on the Sun such as solar flares or coronal loops, and help reveal what causes eruptions on the Sun, what heats the Sun’s atmosphere up to 1,000 times hotter than its surface, and why the Sun’s magnetic fields are constantly on the move.

Coronal loops are streams of solar material traveling up and down looping magnetic field lines). Solar flares are bursts of light, energy and X-rays. They can occur by themselves or can be accompanied by what’s called a coronal mass ejection, or CME, in which a giant cloud of solar material erupts off the Sun, achieves escape velocity and heads off into space.

This movie shows examples of x-ray flares, coronal mass ejections, prominence eruptions when masses of solar material leap off the Sun, much like CMEs. The movie also shows sunspot groups on the solar surface. One of these sunspot groups, a magnetically strong and complex region appearing in mid-January 2014, was one of the largest in nine years as well as a torrent of intense solar flares. In this case, the Sun produced only flares and no CMEs, which, while not unheard of, is somewhat unusual for flares of that size. Scientists are looking at that data now to see if they can determine what circumstances might have led to flares eruptions alone.

Scientists study these images to better understand the complex electromagnetic system causing the constant movement on the sun, which can ultimately have an effect closer to Earth, too: Flares and another type of solar explosion called coronal mass ejections can sometimes disrupt technology in space as well as on Earth (disrupting shortwave communication, stressing power grids, and more). Additionally, studying our closest star is one way of learning about other stars in the galaxy.

Goddard built, operates and manages the SDO spacecraft for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C. SDO is the first mission of NASA’s Living with a Star Program. The program’s goal is to develop the scientific understanding necessary to address those aspects of the sun-Earth system that directly affect our lives and society.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXN-MdoGM9g

Watch this amazing explosion on the Sun. From sunspot complex 1226-1227 comes an X-ray Flare peaking at a magnitude of M2.5 at 0640 UTC on 7 June, 2011.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQMrRu8BWDo

This X-ray flare hurled a massive coronal mass ejection (CME) toward the Earth. This not-squarely Earth-directed CME is moving at 1400 km/s according to NASA models. The CME did not deliver even a noticeable glancing blow to Earth’s magnetic field late June 8th or June 9th.

What can be seen clearly in this movie is one of the most spectacular prominence eruptions ever observed. In fact, one could call it a “prominence explosion”. The prominence material expanded to a volume some 75 times as big across as the earth!

This X-ray flare also triggered an S1-level solar radiation storm, causing a long-lasting polar cap absorption (PCA) event. A polar cap absorption (PCA) event affects the propagation of a shortwave radio signal as it makes its way over the polar regions. In short, radio communications on lower shortwave radio frequencies become more difficult, as those radio signals are absorbed by the ionosphere (in the D-region) over the polar regions.

What does this mean in real-world communications? Trans-polar airline pilots may find it more difficult to communicate with regional air traffic control, shortwave radio listeners who want to hear a broadcast from a country by receiving a transmission from a country by way of a transmission beamed over the pole (like, from Europe into the USA via the North Pole), or other such communications, will find those signals all but gone. The stronger the PCA event, the higher the frequencies absorbed over the polar regions, with the greatest absorption occurring at the lower frequencies.

This movie spans the period of time from 0300 UTC through 1556 UTC, and is composed of the 171-Angstrom, 304-Angstrom, and 335-Angstrom wavelength views as captured by the filters of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA). In this movie, the AIA instruments capture the Sun’s extreme ultraviolet light and reveal a very large eruption of cool gas. It is somewhat unique because at many places in the eruption there seems to be even cooler material–at temperatures less than 80,000 K.

The following is a linked video that is part of this event: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4CsjcUGoaw

Watch as we zoom out to see a total view of the June 7, 2011 moderately-powerful X-ray Flare and Prominence Eruption. This movie will give you a full perspective of the immense size of this prominence eruption as it spews out away from the Sun.

The X-ray Flare peaked at a moderate magnitude of M2.5 at 0640 UTC, but unleashed a huge prominence eruption. The massive cloud of plasma was ejected out into interplanetary space, but missed the Earth. This movie stars with a “close-up” view by the Solar Dynamics Observatory at a combined wavelength view at 94 and 304 Angstroms. Then, the movie views the event further back through the eyes of the COR1 spacecraft (with the SDO AIA 304 image superimposed in the middle). Next, we zoom out to the COR2 spacecraft and superimpose the COR1 and SDO views. Then, we zoom further back to the H1 view… and finally look again at the event close-up.

More info: http://sunspotwatch.com/

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Source: SDO AIA NASA SOHO

If you do follow me on twitter (and if you don’t – you really should) you will have no doubt seen my recent tweets about constructing  a CW decoder. After a number of retweets, and favorites from other very interested hams – I did promise that I would collate all my knowledge into a blog posts and share the details with you all.

So, for those who have not been following me on twitter – here is the sales pitch. I recently started looking at some projects that I could get my Arduino Uno involved in with the radio hobby. I have a number of reasons why I want to combine radio, Arduino and some electronics – more about this later.

I stumbled across a video on YouTube where Budd Churchward showed his Arduino copying and decoding CW straight off the HF band and at a reasonably high speed. I ventured further and wanted to know what electronics Budd was using to achieve this excellent little project.

I used the limited shared knowledge and discovered that the electronics is basally a LM567 – Tone decoder chip that (I have since discovered the chip is used in the ARRL book for Arduino Projects) I discovered takes an audio input and converts this to a HIGH / LOW output suitable for the Arduino to use as a signal for decoding.

Finding a suitable project for the LM567 and trying to work out how fellow constructors had configured their LM567s was not an easy task. This did indeed take quite a lot of chasing and head scratching.  I will go into more technical detail on the next post – but for the reason why I wanted to complete this ? very simple. I w
ant to create a project that would “inspire” young electronically minded students that might have an interest in radio – (i.e the morse code) some coding experience and some construction / electronic interest. This project covers all 3 areas, and only lightly covers each subject area.

In the next post – I show the LM567, the schematic and give you the list of parts required.

If you do follow me on twitter (and if you don’t – you really should) you will have no doubt seen my recent tweets about constructing  a CW decoder. After a number of retweets, and favorites from other very interested hams – I did promise that I would collate all my knowledge into a blog posts and share the details with you all.

So, for those who have not been following me on twitter – here is the sales pitch. I recently started looking at some projects that I could get my Arduino Uno involved in with the radio hobby. I have a number of reasons why I want to combine radio, Arduino and some electronics – more about this later.

I stumbled across a video on YouTube where Budd Churchward showed his Arduino copying and decoding CW straight off the HF band and at a reasonably high speed. I ventured further and wanted to know what electronics Budd was using to achieve this excellent little project.

I used the limited shared knowledge and discovered that the electronics is basally a LM567 – Tone decoder chip that (I have since discovered the chip is used in the ARRL book for Arduino Projects) I discovered takes an audio input and converts this to a HIGH / LOW output suitable for the Arduino to use as a signal for decoding.

Finding a suitable project for the LM567 and trying to work out how fellow constructors had configured their LM567s was not an easy task. This did indeed take quite a lot of chasing and head scratching.  I will go into more technical detail on the next post – but for the reason why I wanted to complete this ? very simple. I w
ant to create a project that would “inspire” young electronically minded students that might have an interest in radio – (i.e the morse code) some coding experience and some construction / electronic interest. This project covers all 3 areas, and only lightly covers each subject area.

In the next post – I show the LM567, the schematic and give you the list of parts required.