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mckitterick Aug. 22nd, 2012 01:04 pm)
mckitterick Aug. 22nd, 2012 01:04 pm)Right now, a dragon half the radius of the Sun is creeping across its surface:
Click the image to see the NASA site.
Okay, it's not REALLY a dragon; rather, a cloud of plasma. But this "cloud" above the Sun is way different than a cloud in the Earth's skies. The long feature on the left of this photo is actually a solar filament made of charged hydrogen gas held aloft by the Sun's magnetic field. This filament was photographed on the Sun about two weeks ago near the active region on the right - see the sunspots. Filaments typically last for a few days to a week, but a long filament like this might hover over the Sun's surface for a month or more. Some filaments can trigger large Hyder flares when they collapse back onto the Sun. Boy oh boy do I wish that I had already gotten myself a proper Hydrogen-alpha solar telescope....
Bonus photo: After turning in final grades for summer, I took a short camping trip with some friends out to Clinton Lake. Here we are:
Dan, Alex, Anthony, Matt, and me.
On Friday night, the Perseids were pre-peak, but we still saw a few. Sadly, Saturday night (the peak), clouds rolled in, so we only caught a streak through the occasional break. Others had better luck:
Click the image to see the photographer's site (in German).
Fall semester has begun, so I'm off to meetings and my second class session!
Later,
Chris
Click the image to see the NASA site.
Okay, it's not REALLY a dragon; rather, a cloud of plasma. But this "cloud" above the Sun is way different than a cloud in the Earth's skies. The long feature on the left of this photo is actually a solar filament made of charged hydrogen gas held aloft by the Sun's magnetic field. This filament was photographed on the Sun about two weeks ago near the active region on the right - see the sunspots. Filaments typically last for a few days to a week, but a long filament like this might hover over the Sun's surface for a month or more. Some filaments can trigger large Hyder flares when they collapse back onto the Sun. Boy oh boy do I wish that I had already gotten myself a proper Hydrogen-alpha solar telescope....
Bonus photo: After turning in final grades for summer, I took a short camping trip with some friends out to Clinton Lake. Here we are:
Dan, Alex, Anthony, Matt, and me.
On Friday night, the Perseids were pre-peak, but we still saw a few. Sadly, Saturday night (the peak), clouds rolled in, so we only caught a streak through the occasional break. Others had better luck:
Click the image to see the photographer's site (in German).
Fall semester has begun, so I'm off to meetings and my second class session!
Later,
Chris
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Clinton seems to be a really pretty lake, from what little I've seen of it (drive in after dark, hook up the utilties, go to bed, wake up, go buy generator, come back, hook up camper, leave)! Of course, where we were at, you couldn't even see the water for all the trees on the shoreline. :(
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Amazingly, I could still get cell reception on the top of my hill in the middle of nowhere, so I also made the chat room as well. A surreal experience, chatting on the internet in the wild. Right at sunset, a covey of thirty or more quail flushed not 25 feet away. Don't know if they'd been holding tight that whole time, or just walked up to me and said "Screw it." Left chat at my first meteor sighting and settled in for a few hours of metoer watch, drink in hand.
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But srsly, that is a beautiful picture!
My school doesn't start til September 24, so i have a whole 'nother month! WOOT!
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