SDO: The Solar Dynamics Observatory launched on February 11, 2010 ... to understand the causes of solar variability and its impacts on Earth ... by studying the solar atmosphere on small scales of space and time and in many wavelengths simultaneously ... how the Sun's magnetic field is generated and structured ... how this stored magnetic energy is converted and released in the form of solar wind, energetic particles, and variations in the solar irradiance ... how Space Weather comes from that activity using measurements of the interior of the Sun, the Sun's magnetic field, and the hot plasma of the solar corona.
The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) generates an enormous amount of data as it monitors the Sun's activity. It is a sun-pointing spacecraft making nearly continuous observations with an almost constant data downlink of 130 Megabits per second. The spacecraft is 4.5 m x 2 m with a mass of 3100 kg. One of the instruments is the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA). This link is to a section of a previous diary in a SciTech series by palantir mentioned at the end of this diary. The AIA link provides detailed specifications of this instrument and examples of the data obtained.
I have had an interest and been involved in Citizen Science projects for a long time. It started with the Seti@Home search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. Lately, I have been involved in Zooniverse. Citizen Scientists use the images from SDO in projects of their own. One such project is by an individual who maintains a Youtube channel GeeMackVideo. The SDO data is publicly available for download as images that are posted soon after being received by the science teams. They are provided at a rate of about one image per channel every 15 minutes. The following video is from the GeeMackVideo series. Below the video is a description of how he compiles a video like this from the downloaded images.
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Just after the video starts, you can click on the icons like the ones below the colored arrows for HD and full screen modes. |
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I asked GeeMack how long it took, and to describe the process. His explanation was quite direct. He said...
It takes around a half hour to download the data for a 12 hour sequence to make a 40 second video. Each frame comes in as a 1M compressed 4096x4096 grayscale image. I figure out the crop and run those images through as a batch cropping program. That might take another half hour. Then I put them in a video program which adds the color, logo overlays, and music, and tweak the start/finish and final crop. That can be five or ten minutes. Then run the result through a converter to make the MP4 finished product, another 5 minutes. And uploading to YouTube might take another 10. Most of it is automated, so I might have 15 or 20 minutes hands-on time. It's often a couple hours from when I start to when I post the link. But in many cases the most recent frame in the video can be only an hour ago in real time.
It seems so easy. Anyone can do it. Right? It would take me days.
The solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CME) can sometimes be directed at the Earth. Such events can greatly affect Earth's Spaceweather. The link provides information on solar winds, x-ray solar flares, sunspots, aurora forecasts, images of interest, and much more. There is also a searchable archive by date in the upper right. For example, visit this link to see the Spaceweather details and the data about activity associated with sunspot 1402, the subject of the videos in this diary. |
This clickable graphic is one of the tools provided by NASA at Spaceweather.com. The Sun is the small white circle. The Earth is a yellow dot. Other planets and spacecraft are plotted. The animation shows the forecasted path to be taken by a CME and the likelihood that it will impact the Earth. The first part of the animation is an overhead view above the solar system. The second part is a side view toward Earth with the Sun at the left. The third part, not seen until you click the graphic, is a 360˚ sun centered view out toward the planets. This CME was on January 27, also from sunspot 1402 and is expected to miss Earth as it passes on the 30th and 31st. Earlier last week, 1402 directed material at Earth and caused some aurora as noted on Astronomy Picture of the Day. Here is another story by NASA with additional details and graphics. |
The subject of SDO has been thoroughly covered before in an excellent and comprehensive diary series by my friend and colleague in SciTech palantir. I urge readers to consult those diaries listed below for a wealth of additional information, science instrumentation, videos, and more. |
- Sun er Tuesday Science Videos Solar Dynamics Observatory
- Sunday Science Videos 8 Living With A Star
- Sunday Science Videos 9 Solar Dynamics Observatory (Finale)
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The Sun's activity is on the increase. It is expected that solar flares and CME will become more frequent. I am considering whether to make these GeeMackVideos a regular publication when interesting activity is occurring. Please give me some feedback on this question in the poll below. I hope you have found this citizen science project interesting.
In the interest of full disclosure, the owner of the GeeMackVideo channel is my brother-in-law. Some of the music in the videos is provided by his talented wife.