SDO First-Light Briefing
Launched on Feb. 11, 2010, SDO is the most advanced spacecraft ever designed to study the sun and its dynamic behavior. The spacecraft will provide images with clarity ten times better than high definition television and more comprehensive science data faster than any solar observing spacecraft in history. 
Artist concept of SDO spacecraft. Credit: NASA/Goddard NASA will hold a news briefing and unveil initial images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, at 2:15 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, April 21, in the atrium of the Newseum in Washington, D.C. The Newseum is located at 555 Pennsylvania Ave., NW. NASA Television and the agency’s Web site will provide live coverage of the briefing.
[Note: Insiders tell me that some of the images from the spacecraft show exquisite details of material streaming outward and away from sunspots. Other SDO photos show extreme magnifications of activity on the sun’s surface, such as pores. The spacecraft also has made some high resolution measurements of solar flares in a broad range of extreme ultraviolet wavelengths. The images are stunning I’m told. I’ll post them here as soon as they are available. – Anthony]
NASA, Newseum to Debut Images from Unique Solar Spacecraft
WASHINGTON — NASA will hold a news briefing and unveil initial images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, at 2:15 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, April 21, in the atrium of the Newseum. The Newseum is located at 555 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, in Washington. NASA Television and the agency’s Web site will provide live coverage of the briefing.
Launched on Feb. 11, 2010, SDO is the most advanced spacecraft ever designed to study the sun and its dynamic behavior. The spacecraft will provide images with clarity ten times better than high definition television and more comprehensive science data faster than any solar observing spacecraft in history.
The participants for this briefing are:
- Dean Pesnell, SDO project scientist, Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
- Alan Title, principal investigator, Atmospheric Imaging Assembly instrument, Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo Alto, Calif.
- Philip H. Scherrer, principal investigator, Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager instrument, Stanford University in Palo Alto
- Tom Woods, principal investigator, Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment instrument, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, University of Colorado in Boulder
- Madhulika Guhathakurta, SDO program scientist, NASA Headquarters in Washington
The Newseum is a 250,000-square-foot museum of news that offers visitors an experience that blends five centuries of news history with up-to-the-second technology and hands-on exhibits.
For more information about NASA TV downlinks and streaming video, visit:
Some of the images from the spacecraft show never-before-seen detail of material streaming outward and away from sunspots. Others show extreme close-ups of activity on the sun’s surface. The spacecraft also has made the first high-resolution measurements of solar flares in a broad range of extreme ultraviolet wavelengths.
What Clive said! ☺
/dr.bill
South African astrophysicist and solar researcher Hilton Ratcliffe
Surely this will spell the death knell to Mann, Jones, IPCC, the Numpty of Nashville,
Hansen that the warming HAD to be blamed on something taxable….CO2.
Playing Gores’ Lawyer:
‘The SDO has shown a marked increase in heating elements which will be trapped by CO2 and therefore we need to bring forward all legislation related to Omissions of AGW gases to next week (before any data gets analysed)’.
The Sun looks more like a SNOOKER ball. Billiards is a bit naff.b 🙂
In the fore front of the space-age evolution you never really read about any technology being anything less.
The absoluteness a statement such as this: ‘Launched on Feb. 11, 2010, SDO is the most advanced spacecraft ever designed to study the sun and its dynamic behavior.’ is I believe overly redundant. First of all it will not be the most advanced spacecraft ever designed to study the sun. Secondly who’d spend money on the results of the least advanced on Feb. 11, 2010?
Thanks Leif and ShrNfr for the data links. The Sun seems to be making a statement!
Gail Combs (03:41:02) : GEE, Solar cycle 24 was real short! /Sarc
SC24 Max = 16?
At last something worth spent!
Can’t wait for the images. It’s 7:30pm in Europe at the moment 2 more hours left…
Leif, please make sure that Hansen is kept faaaar away from this project!
Before you know it, the sensors will be looking for “Dark Heat” !
Prediction – the words “Climate Change” will come up more often than “Global Warming”.
Note: The one who kisses first (ie: mentions “Climate Change” or “Global Warming”) is the traitor who sold their soul for 30 pieces of silver. The first to mention “Climate Change” is also the one who should have their ear cut off. If the audiance starts weeping and knashing their teeth then all is lost.
PS: Any comments about already having learned something new and exciting from the initial data should be taken as “press release” talk for ‘we’re sure a hope’n and a pray’n we’re gonna learn something really good really soon but it’s really too soon to say for sure so please give us another 24 hours’.
The Sun is in a LEIF CONSTANT state. A baseline TSI state. As proposed by
Nicola Scarfeta. to Leif:
‘…………Just a curiosity. During the Maunder minimum no sunspots were seen. Do you believe the TSI was completely and perfectly constant during that period?
I propose to call such a value the Leif’s constant 🙂 ………’
20 04 2010
Can’t wait!
kwik (10:08:40) :
Before you know it, the sensors will be looking for “Dark Heat” !
Well, most of the images SDO takes are at wavelengths invisible to the human eye 🙂
Great Balls of Fire !
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/firstlight/movies/prominence20100330.mov
NASA TV went to buffering after the woman said that “the sun controls the weather on earth”… when it came back on-line someone else was talking.
Maybe there should be a new “Live Google Sun”
The most existing movie to me was taken on March 30th [almost a month ago] showing a CME taking off, but watch how the lower part of the CME is sucked right back into the Sun even faster than the top part is taling off.
http://www.youtube.com//SDOmission2009#p/u/12/eWrm-dADE8w
also watch the ‘tornado like’ screw or helical twists of the plasma.
Ref – Pascvaks (10:11:33) :
“Prediction – the words “Climate Change” will come up more often than “Global Warming”.
“Note: The one who kisses first (ie: mentions “Climate Change” or “Global Warming”) is the traitor who sold their soul for 30 pieces of silver. The first to mention “Climate Change” is also the one who should have their ear cut off. If the audiance starts weeping and knashing their teeth then all is lost.”
__________________________
The words “Global Warming” didn’t come up at all. The words “Climate Change” came up once, on a slide, presented during the comments of Madhulika Guhathakurta, SDO program scientist, NASA Headquarters in Washington.
Apparently, as with the British MET Office, the problem is at the top of the chart. Wouldn’t ya know it?
Fortunately for the planet, the audiance never started weeping and knashing their teeth and all was not lost.
Pascvaks (12:39:11) :
The words “Climate Change” came up once, on a slide, presented during the comments of Madhulika Guhathakurta
She was just paying lip-service to the notion, and quickly went on. If you blinked, you’d have missing it.
Leif: Is this thing really going to tell us anything we didn’t already know? I mean, we’ve had sensors tracking every layer this SDO is(?) but maybe not at the same resolution. I guess, what are the expectations on the (solar) street for this thing?
Ref – Leif Svalgaard (12:46:43) :
Pascvaks (12:39:11) :
“The words “Climate Change” came up once, on a slide, presented during the comments of Madhulika Guhathakurta”
“She was just paying lip-service to the notion, and quickly went on. If you blinked, you’d have missing it.”
__________________________
True. I don’t fault scientists, just the $cientists and Poli$ci-types at the top of the food chain. I really was surprised to catch that item during the briefing, it did go by without comment didn’t it? I actually thought the whole thing went off well; no political or religious rants. Maybe the winds are shifting; the pendilum is swinging back. Let’s hope.
johnythelowery (13:13:27) :
Leif: Is this thing really going to tell us anything we didn’t already know? I mean, we’ve had sensors tracking every layer this SDO is(?) but maybe not at the same resolution. I guess, what are the expectations on the (solar) street for this thing?
There is a saying in solar physics: “the interesting things are always happening just below your best resolution”, so getting to a higher resolution always shows us something new. Also, many things happen fast, so getting a high time-resolution is important. For my own work, the helioseismic data will finally reach to the inner core of the Sun which is unexplored today. We should also be able to trace the ‘conveyor belt’ return flow, which we have never observed. Observing the birth of active regions will be possible by the high data cadence. And finally, since we are entering domains where we have never been [time and space wise] experience shows that whenever we do that, we learn something new, and, of course, at this time we cannot say what that will be.
Hopefully this satellite can put the absurd “conveyor belt” model of solar convection into the trash can.
Ray (11:58:54) :
“NASA TV went to buffering after the woman said that “the sun controls the weather on earth”… when it came back on-line someone else was talking.”
Incontestable! Without the sun all water would quickly freeze and stop the hydrological cycle. It is the sun that creates our weather.
Tenuc (14:46:14) :
Without the sun all water would quickly freeze and stop the hydrological cycle. It is the sun that creates our weather.
No, it is the rotation of Earth on a tilted axis, that creates our weather.