See amazing new sun images from NJIT’s Big Bear Solar Observatory
Caption: The most detailed sunspot ever obtained in visible light was seen by new telescope at NJIT’s Big Bear Solar Observatory.
Credit: Big Bear Solar Observatory
NJIT Distinguished Professor Philip R. Goode and the Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) team have achieved “first light” using a deformable mirror in what is called adaptive optics at Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO). Using this equipment, an image of a sunspot was published yesterday on the website of Ciel et l’Espace, as the photo of the day: http://www.cieletespace.fr/node/5752
“This photo of a sunspot is now the most detailed ever obtained in visible light,” according to Ciel et l’Espace. In September, the publication, a popular astronomy magazine, will publish several more photos of the Sun taken with BBSO’s new adaptive optics system.
Goode said that the images were achieved with the 1.6 m clear aperture, off-axis New Solar Telescope (NST) at BBSO. The telescope has a resolution covering about 50 miles on the Sun’s surface.
The telescope is the crown jewel of BBSO, the first facility-class solar observatory built in more than a generation in the U.S. The instrument is undergoing commissioning at BBSO.
Since 1997, under Goode’s direction, NJIT has owned and operated BBSO, located in a clear mountain lake. The mountain lake is characterized by sustained atmospheric stability, which is essential for BBSO’s primary interests of measuring and understanding solar complex phenomena utilizing dedicated telescopes and instruments.
The images were taken by the NST with atmospheric distortion corrected by its 97 actuator deformable mirror. By the summer of 2011, in collaboration with the National Solar Observatory, BBSO will have upgraded the current adaptive optics system to one utilizing a 349 actuator deformable mirror.
With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Air Force Office of Scientific Research, NASA and NJIT, the NST began operation in the summer of 2009. Additional support from NSF was received a few months ago to fund further upgrades to this new optical system.
The NST will be the pathfinder for an even larger ground-based telescope, the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST), to be built over the next decade. NJIT is an ATST co-principal investigator on this NSF project. The new grant will allow Goode and partners from the National Solar Observatory (NSO) to develop a new and more sophisticated kind of adaptive optics, known as multi-conjugate adaptive optics (MCAO).
The new optical system will allow the researchers to increase the distortion-free field of view to allow for better ways to study these larger and puzzling areas of the Sun. MCAO on the NST will be a pathfinder for the optical system of NSO’s 4-meter aperture ATST coming later in the decade.
Scientists believe magnetic structures, like sunspots hold an important key to understanding space weather. Space weather, which originates in the Sun, can have dire consequences on Earth’s climate and environment. A bad storm can disrupt power grids and communication, destroy satellites and even expose airline pilots, crew and passengers to radiation.
The new telescope now feeds a high-order adaptive optics system, which in turn feeds the next generation of technologies for measuring magnetic fields and dynamic events using visible and infrared light. A parallel computer system for real-time image enhancement highlights it.
Goode and BBSO scientists have studied solar magnetic fields for many years. They are expert at combining BBSO ground-based data with satellite data to determine dynamic properties of the solar magnetic fields.
Maybe the sun is getting out of its teenage eons and is getting fewer zits.
Surely it is a picture of Uranus.
My first thought was also Sauron but later I came to think of Alan Parsons Project:
“I am the eye in the sky, looking at you…”
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
Thank you.
3×2 says:
August 25, 2010 at 3:26 pm
AJ Abrams says:
August 25, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Someone is going to say it, so I might as well. That looks exactly like an [snip].
[Let someone else say it. ~dbs, mod.]
… arse
There… done.
——————————————————–
So shortly speaking it is a solar fart in slow motion? 🙂
This is so cool. You can almost feel yourself falling down the flux tube. What is amazing to me is that we are looking directly down it and it is black; no visible light is emerging. How far down does this tube go? Clearly down to the top of the optically opaque part of the Sun. Also, the flux tube must keep all matter out of it, otherwise it would be reflecting and refracting light from the sides of the tube; am I wrong in concluding that this tube keeps a perfect vacuumn inside it.
It would be good to attempt a radar or lidar scan of a flux tube/Sun spot like this to determine how deep that layer was.
Atomic Hairdryer @ur momisugly August 25, 2010 at 2:50 pm
So.. I kinda get the flux lines around the hole, but what makes the pebble texture?
Mr Hairdryer, or may I call you Atomic?, I have been lead to believe, by Leif’s colleagues, that these are convection cells. Take a can of tomato soup, follow the instructions, and watch as it boils in a saucepan; notice the convection cells form?
There are estimates of how deep the convection layer is, but I think it is pretty shallow, given their lateral dimensions.
Leif?
It is indeed a beautiful photo, but I don’t think it is really that groundbreaking. this photo from APOD back in November 2005 shows similar detail, although the new one does seem to have a bit tighter focus.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap051106.html
I vaguely recall linking to this APOD in a comment here, but I’m kind of tired right now and I wouldn’t swear to it.
As we now can see in exquisite detail what previously would be insignificant specks, does this mean that sunspot numbers will go up?
Robert of Ottawa says:
August 25, 2010 at 7:12 pm
There are estimates of how deep the convection layer is, but I think it is pretty shallow, given their lateral dimensions.
The individual cells are only as deep as their lateral size, but they are like tiny bubbles in a very deep [200,000 km] convection zone.
Here is a view of that spot by the Hinode spacecraft http://sun.stanford.edu/~kaorin/tmp_dir/NOAA11084.jpg at similar resolution.
vukcevic says:
August 25, 2010 at 2:49 pm
This may not ‘amuse’ Dr. Svalgaard, but it is all in the interest of ‘science’. Using data from his file
This is old hat: http://leif.org/research/Long-term%20Evolution%20of%20Solar%20Sector%20Structure.pdf
Dave Wendt,
But your link is only 99.99798% as good as the new pic. Someone has to justify the $93,748,979,253 extra gov’t expenditure. So quit complaining, and appreciate the better resolution your additional tax money paid for!
[/sarc]
“This is so cool. You can almost feel yourself falling down the flux tube. What is amazing to me is that we are looking directly down it and it is black; no visible light is emerging. How far down does this tube go? ”
I am pretty sure it is not a tube. More like a region expressing a line of magnetic force.
And it isn’t really black. just dark compared to its surroundings.
Still (literally) blindingly bright.
How’d I do ?
Robert of Ottawa says:
August 25, 2010 at 6:35 pm
What is amazing to me is that we are looking directly down it and it is black; no visible light is emerging.
No, it is extremely bright, being many thousands of degrees hot. Only by contrast to the even brighter surrounding photosphere does it appear darker.
How far down does this tube go?
We don’t know precisely but it is likely to be a rather shallow affair.
Also, the flux tube must keep all matter out of it, otherwise it would be reflecting and refracting light from the sides of the tube; am I wrong in concluding that this tube keeps a perfect vacuumn inside it.
There is not a vacuum inside, but the density is a bit lower, because the magnetic field also exerts a pressure.
Leif
I posted a link to this
http://www.physorg.com/news199591806.html
on another thread, hoping to get the reactions of those commenters with more specific knowledge of the field than I possess. Unfortunately the tenor of the dialogue degenerated significantly soon after my post went up. When I saw you were commenting on the thread I hoped I could get your reaction to this concept. Are you aware of it and do you have any initial reaction.
Dave Wendt says:
August 25, 2010 at 8:24 pm
Leif
I posted a link to this
http://www.physorg.com/news199591806.html
on another thread, hoping to get the reactions of those commenters with more specific knowledge of the field than I possess. Unfortunately the tenor of the dialogue degenerated significantly soon after my post went up. When I saw you were commenting on the thread I hoped I could get your reaction to this concept. Are you aware of it and do you have any initial reaction.
———–
This isn’t my core competence, but it is an interesting twist! The PDF of Shu’s paper can be downloaded here:
http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/OR+au:Wun_Yi+all:+AND+EXACT+Wun_Yi+Shu/0/1/0/all/0/1
I followed the link to the French site. There if you click on the photo you can see a higher resolution version of the image. Look at the lower left and lower right corners in that image and you’ll see very small black spots that almost look like either the start or end of a cluster of sunspots. The spots are unique to those corners the upper corners of the photo.
Overall very cool – especially given how frequently I’ve driven past that observatory.
I’ll post this again here (fixing a few typos) as an answer to those critics commenting that I am engaged in “wilds guesses” instead of “true science.”
I am not a scientist. I am a music composer. But I happened to know, as any educated modern human being does, that the true scientific approach toward a bunch of competing theories requires that we pick the simplest one of those that fit observable experimental data and correctly predict new experimental data.
In cosmology, such a theory is the curvature theory of the stable Universe. It doesn’t require any contrived additions to the general relativity, such as accelerated expansion, dark energy, dark matter, or creation disguised as a beginning of time. It postulates that the curvature of space-time itself interacts with photons moving through vast intergalactic distances, making them shed small amount of energy on the way. This simple and clear postulate allows for exact explanation of all observable cosmological phenomena, predicting all important parameters, such as Hubble’s constant, intensity of the cosmic microwave radiation, its temperature, etc., much better than the “mandatory” Big Bang dogma. It also explains many things that the more fashionable theories try to ignore and shrug off (such as Pioneer 10 blue shift effect).
Big Bang theory (BBT) has established itself in modern cosmological circles for exactly the same reason that made the Anthropogenic Global Warming theory “mandatory” in the climatological community: conformism. Conformist’s mind doesn’t seek the truth, it wants to construct a theory, however cumbersome and implausible, that would satisfy, psychologically and financially, the greatest number of (influential) people, and antagonize the least amount of (influential) people. Hence the George Lemaître’s Big Bang. (He came up with it after several long and serious consultations in Vatican, disturbed by Einstein’s notion of the stable Universe with no beginning and no end.) BBT is the consensus theory. It has nothing in common with the factual truth.
The wildest guess of all is to mistake consensus for reality.
The most cowardly behavior of all is to aggressively defend the status quo.
A voice of one calling in the desert: “OBJECTS ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR!” It is amazing that so many people read these words on their cars’ curved rear-view windows every day, and still don’t get it. When we look into the night’s starry skies, we look at the curved three-dimensional surface of the four-dimensional Universe, the same way we look at the curved two-dimensional surface of a rear-view mirror in the three-dimensional worlds. On both surfaces, the farther are the objects, the more the appearance that they are located at ever greater distances from us, the faster they seem to “run away.”
P.S. On the lighter note:
If we are to believe that, indeed, Christmas Eve
Celebrates what, in fact, has been done,
Then the time of Big Bang we could certainly hang
Circa March 25, minus 1.
Question for Leif, a little O/T and probably a bit simplistic for most here for which I apologise:
Leif, on your TSI plot at http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png
the MF follows a fairly regular ‘saw tooth’ signal to the left. Two questions:
1. What is the origin of the ‘saw tooth’ pattern?
2. The emerging signal to the right is messy but seems to be slowly trying to assume the same shape, possibly reversed. What do previous minima look like on the same basis? Have you comparable plots available or failing that, could you point me to the source data you’re using? I’m guessing it’s probably a composite of several sites.
Thanks.
A wonder to behold.
But imagine a video with same resolution.
That would be even more spectacular.
John
Leif,
What do you think this sun spot would like from the side, viewed along a tangent to the sun’s surface. Assuming you could get the same resolution/definition as this image has.
John
Alexander Feht says: (August 25, 2010 at 9:56 pm) I am not a scientist. I am a music composer.
An impressive post, Alexander.
AJB says:
August 25, 2010 at 10:17 pm
Question for Leif, a little O/T and probably a bit simplistic for most here for which I apologise:
Leif, on your TSI plot at http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png
the MF follows a fairly regular ‘saw tooth’ signal to the left. Two questions:
1. What is the origin of the ‘saw tooth’ pattern?
Reply;
correlates to the magnetic rotation of the sun, or the 27.32 day pattern of Lunar declinational culminations in phase.
The interplanetary spacecraft and solar observatory provides observational positions, times, electromagentic wavelengths, and other opportunities not available to ground based solar observatories. The ground based solar observatories provide additinal observations and observational opportunities the interplanetary spacecraft solr obse4rvatories cannot presently include in their observation schedules.
Although the any special warnings from solar observatory spacecraft in closer orbit around the Sun cannot transmit their observations faster than light to the Earth based researchers, they can provide some improved observations of special Solar events in advance of their occurrence, and they can transmit warnings of Solar radiation such as proton storms traveling through interplanetary space at speeds of one-third the speed of light. They can also monitor events which occur on the surface of nthe Sun faccing away from the Earth that are about to roatate towards the Earth and direct radiation towards the Earth.
John Whitman says:
August 25, 2010 at 10:33 pm
“A wonder to behold.
But imagine a video with same resolution.
That would be even more spectacular.
John”
Videos can be found here:
http://www.solarphysics.kva.se/
Click on “Gallery” in the upper left.