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The New Solar Telescope captures the Eye of Sauron!
Well, actually, this is a first light adaptive optics image from the NST at the Big Bear Solar Observatory in California. "With a 1.6-meter primary mirror, the NST is the largest solar telescope in the world," says observatory staff Nicolas Gorceix. "It has realtime correction for atmospheric distortion [aka "adaptive optics"], so we can see things in very high resolution - as small as 65 km wide on the Sun. For perspective, Earth is slightly smaller than the whole sunspot including the dark umbra and the daisy petal-like penumbra. The spot is surrounded by the Sun's ubiquitous granular field," which shows the boiling surface of the Sun.
Check it out:
Click the image to see the story.
Welcome back, sunspots!
Chris
Well, actually, this is a first light adaptive optics image from the NST at the Big Bear Solar Observatory in California. "With a 1.6-meter primary mirror, the NST is the largest solar telescope in the world," says observatory staff Nicolas Gorceix. "It has realtime correction for atmospheric distortion [aka "adaptive optics"], so we can see things in very high resolution - as small as 65 km wide on the Sun. For perspective, Earth is slightly smaller than the whole sunspot including the dark umbra and the daisy petal-like penumbra. The spot is surrounded by the Sun's ubiquitous granular field," which shows the boiling surface of the Sun.
Check it out:
Click the image to see the story.
Welcome back, sunspots!
Chris
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Or, y'know, just slightly cooler sun-stuff. A sunspot only looks black compared to the unimaginably intense brightness of the surface of the Sun: If we could mask off the surface surrounding a sunspot, it would still be bright enough to blind you in an instant.
So it only looks black!
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(Speaking of purr, Fetish is lying on the little rug beneath my desk, gripping my left foot in her paw. Awww.)
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/holyoutlaw/4868301886/
;>
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i also saw this. i think it's so beautiful!!
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_d-gs0WoUw