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.
Leif: Okay. Yu ‘Da Man!
johnythelowery (10:12:32) :
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
———
REPLY:
Hah! I was going to nominate this minimum as the “Svalgaard Minimum,” but I can’t figure out who to send the check to!
Poetic, isn’t it?
Regarding warming….I saw Dr. John Holdren, Pres. Obama’s chief science advisor, give a stem-winding lecture on global warming (no, not climate change!) at the Chicago Grand Challenges Summit. He had nice, colorful slides of red-hot polar regions, swooping graphs of temps going up & up etc.
I had to bite my tongue! Don’t expect many changes to come out of the Obama administration is all I have to say, all I heard was gloom & doom.
Here’s the program for the event I’m attending:
http://www.iit.edu/grand_challenges/program/
I had a great chat with Bill Kurtis about the failures & drawbacks of the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol, he seems like a nice guy.
CRS, Dr.P.H. (21:17:24) :
Hah! I was going to nominate this minimum as the “Svalgaard Minimum,” but I can’t figure out who to send the check to!
Poetic, isn’t it?
Regarding warming….I saw Dr. John Holdren, Pres. Obama’s chief science advisor, give a stem-winding lecture on global warming (no, not climate change!) at the Chicago Grand Challenges Summit. He had nice, colorful slides of red-hot polar regions, swooping graphs of temps going up & up etc.
I had to bite my tongue! Don’t expect many changes to come out of the Obama administration is all I have to say, all I heard was gloom & doom.
Here’s the program for the event I’m attending:
http://www.iit.edu/grand_challenges/program/
I had a great chat with Bill Kurtis about the failures & drawbacks of the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol, he seems like a nice guy
————————————————————-
Leif has kindly decided, against the wishes of a WUWT poll to name the minimum a Svalgaard minimum, to name it if given the choice the Eddy Minimum after a colleague of his. Leif advises we won’t know if it’s in a minimum for another 30 years! or so.
However, a Leif Constant……