Surf's Up... On the Sun!?

The Sun has been amazing us all week. First there a massive explosion; then we learned it's magnetic field created a froth of magnetic bubbles at the edge of the Solar System; And now it has been discovered that there are "surfer waves" on the Sun. Whoa, dude... Surfer waves -- initiated in the sun, as they are in the water, by a process called a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability -- have been found in the sun's atmosphere. Credit: NASA/SDO/Astrophysical Journal Letters I wouldn't suggest trying out your "hang 10" on these waves though. Besides being the surface of the Sun, the waves are about the size of the continental U.S. and moving at...

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Posted in SDO,Sun,Waves 19 comments

The Surprising Edge of Our Solar System

A couple of days ago I mentioned that NASA was having a teleconference today (June 9) to discuss conditions at the edge of the Solar System. (You can find it mentioned at the end of this post.) Well, the conference is over, and the press releases are out, along with some new images and a nifty video to explain it all. I find the video gives the best explanation about what has been learned. It is a bit amazing to know we are still learning so much about our own Solar System, and we recognize that we still have much to learn. Old and new views of the heliosheath. Red and blue spirals are the gracefully curving magnetic field lines of orthodox...

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Posted in Astronomy,Heliosheath,Solar System,Voyager 34 comments

Spectacular Stellar Explosion

I wanted to get something science-y in today, and since this has been all over the place, I figured I would mention it. Yesterday morning (June 7th) there was a massive explosion on the surface of the Sun. The video can be seen below, and is spectacular. To describe the event, the Solar Dynamics Observatory science team says: “The Sun unleashed an M-2 (medium-sized) solar flare with a substantial coronal mass ejection (CME) on June 7 that is visually spectacular. The large cloud of particles mushroomed up and fell back down looking as if it covered an area of almost half the solar surface.” “SDO observed the flare’s peak at 1:41 AM EST. SDO recorded these images in extreme ultraviolet light and they show a very large explosion of cool gas. It is somewhat unique because at many places...

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Posted in SDO,solar flares,Sun 22 comments

For A Gay Girl in Damascus

WARNING: This is not my normal sort of post! Some of you in the blog-o-sphere, or even just avid news consumers, may have heard of this girls blog before: A Gay Girl in Damascus. I first learned about her in late April when the story was making the rounds about this girl and her bravery and her father's heroism, as recorded in this post. I have felt touched and supportive of this blog. To be an open lesbian in country like Syria cannot be easy. And then in the last month everything has exploded. There is a revolution happening that most news sites seem to put aside as security forces versus protestors. The problems are much deeper than that. So,...

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Posted in Amina,Gay,Syria 29 comments

Our Changing Solar System

As they keep searching, astronomers learn more and more about how our Solar System formed. There is a good amount of understanding on how things happened, but a lot of the finer details of just why things appear the way they do still have to be answered. Our Solar System is like a giant cosmic puzzle, and we are constantly finding new clues about the course of its evolution. This week a few amazing findings that are redefining the way we understand our Solar System, planet formation, and what we might expect to find in other star systems. An artistic rendition of the impact that created the Moon. The idea that our Earth-Moon configuration...

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Posted in Earth,Jupiter,Mars,Moon,Solar System,Voyager 33 comments

30 Kilometers for Opportunity

There's no stopping NASA's Opportunity rover on Mars. This collage maps the the entire route of the Opportunity Mars Rover. (Click to enlarge) Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell Marco Di Lorenzo, Kenneth Kremer On June 1, 2011, a short drive of 482 feet (146.8 meters) pushed the rover's odometer past 30 km (18.64 miles). It has taken nearly seven and a half years since the rover landed on Jan 24, 2004. Also keep in mind that this mission only had a 3 month 'warranty', and was expected to travel only a quarter mile. The rover has managed to rove 50 times the initially planned distance, over 29 times beyond the original design lifetime! An amazing...

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Posted in Endeavour,Mars,NASA,Opportunity,Rover 19 comments