Vader19695
Wonder of ScienceA mesmerizing timelapse of the Sun in ultraviolet light, captured by the SDO spacecraft over the course of a month.
Credit: NASA/SDO
#sun #nasa #space #astronomy
Created using images captured in combined wavelengths of 171, 193 and 211 angstrom, during October 2014. Images provided courtesy of NASA/SDO and the AIA, EVE, and HMI science teams (http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov).
RowinSpeez@wonderofscience wow, holy crap this is cool.
Kobentino 
@wonderofscience @pjacksonmusic needs to put some guitar licks over this.
Phillip Jackson@kobentino @wonderofscience I'll see what I can do!
Peter Drake HAS MOVED@kobentino @wonderofscience @pjacksonmusic
It's a sort of ... disco inferno.
Sapphic Hazard@wonderofscience That's hot.
ShhhStephen@wonderofscience Stunning! I’d love if you could link to the original/source where possible; the account on that fowl site has been really great about this. Being able to dive deeper and learn more is always awesome.
paprikapink@wonderofscience Why is the sun surrounded by "the blackness of space"? It's right there, being The Sun. It should be *shining,* right?
@wonderofscience @paprikapink For all intents and purposes, the blackness of space is empty. That is to say, there is nothing for the light to reflect off of, so we don’t see it. All the light produced in the sun (or any star) moves out in all directions until it hits something that might reflect it towards us. The photons headed in our direction are detected by our optical sensors, unlike the light going in other directions.
@ShhhStephen @wonderofscience I was afraid this would be the answer. Someone recently told a joke that ended with "the moon has no light, it just reflects the sun." And that was cute. But the thing is the sun doesn't shine either. No moon, no Venus & Earth et al, no us? No sunshine. This is sending me down a philosophical rabbit hole. There's a poem, or a koan, or a baffling occult ritual in here somewhere, but I can't quite thinkfeel all the way to it.
@paprikapink @wonderofscience I don’t know the joke, but it is true that the light we see from the 🌘is sunlight reflecting off the moon’s surface! The ☀️_does_ shine. Photons are constantly created deep within stars and once they get to the surface they zoom away at incredible speed. ⭐️ We can only see the light that zooms towards us; ☀️ is bright because it creates light and 🌖is less bright because it only reflects some sunlight to 🌍
@ShhhStephen
Yes all the photons zoom and so on. But what we call shining? That's only happening when we observe it. It's our eyes that let there be light. I am now imagining a distant planet where the humanoids and all of the other beings do not observe light. I want a Star Trek crew to visit it and have their preconceptions about senses and science and existence ROCKED.
Yes all the photons zoom and so on. But what we call shining? That's only happening when we observe it. It's our eyes that let there be light. I am now imagining a distant planet where the humanoids and all of the other beings do not observe light. I want a Star Trek crew to visit it and have their preconceptions about senses and science and existence ROCKED.
@paprikapink “shining” for stars is that they create light. Just as 🔦 shines light; if I turn it on but close my eyes, the light is still created and moving away from the 💡. When I open my eyes, I will see the light.
It certainly would be interesting to meet a species of humanoids that do not see light, but we do not need to go so far. Many humans on 🌍 are blind from birth. Persons without any eyesight can only listen to explanations about light, and learn from those than can see.
@ShhhStephen
😊 exploring possibilities and meaning on a fictional planet where vision does not exist, as a way to open one's mind to different perspectives on reality in one's own world, might be revalatory in a way that is akin to trying to understand what someone else is saying
😊 exploring possibilities and meaning on a fictional planet where vision does not exist, as a way to open one's mind to different perspectives on reality in one's own world, might be revalatory in a way that is akin to trying to understand what someone else is saying
@paprikapink @wonderofscience If you shine a 🔦 at the wall in a dark room, the wall reflects some of that light to your 👁. If you look at the 💡directly it will be much brighter! Much of the time you won’t see the beam of light as it travels through the air to the wall; some will reflect off of dust particles and we’ll see those, and sometimes water vapor/humidity. There is so little ‘stuff’ in space that we don’t see the light going in other directions: only darkness
Martin Vermeer FCD@paprikapink @wonderofscience The space around the Sun is very nearly a vacuum. The reason the area around the solar disc is bright when seen from the Earth is scattering in the Earth's atmosphere. Rise above the atmosphere, and the sky is dark to almost the solar rim. So dark even that the faintly shining solar corona can be seen!
@martinvermeer @wonderofscience Yeah. For some reason this is blowing my mind lately. Just contrasting the utter darkness of space vs the way light is such an integral part of earthly existence. Imagining life on a planet that doesn't have an atmosphere, doesn't see light like we do, or at all...how COMPLETELY different their existence would be. How would they measure the distance between galaxies without light-years? I want StarTrek to visit a world like this
@paprikapink @wonderofscience Actually you don't need light in order to have "light"years... the speed of light c is just the conversion constant between time and distance units, a bit like the ratio between feet (for height) and nautical miles (for location) in aviation. Radio waves, neutrinos, gravitational waves all move at the speed of light.
And then there is the parsec, based on measurements of the annual parallax. Already our Earthly astronomers manage without light years 😁
And then there is the parsec, based on measurements of the annual parallax. Already our Earthly astronomers manage without light years 😁
@martinvermeer
yeah that's not really my point. but thank you! 🌞
yeah that's not really my point. but thank you! 🌞
Rai Aren 🖖✨📚🇺🇦@wonderofscience Wow!! Incredible! 🤩
Marina Epelman@VioletPixel what a fabulous spanakopita!
WoofieInPC@wonderofscience Gorgeous and amazing!
Anna 
@wonderofscience Kolla vilken cool bild @Poxisen !
Sandy
SusanF@wonderofscience So beautiful!
Gargravar@wonderofscience ah. So it's centripetal force driving the plasma circulation!?! That's incredible footage!
carol@wonderofscience Beautiful! Thank you. 💜
Michael 🌈@wonderofscience Utterly beautiful
Jokke@wonderofscience i can totally relate why in ancient times the Sun was worshipped as a God.
belfinwe 🇳🇴
Margie 🧟🍝😱✨☄️🪐👽
Sarah, The Website Therapist
Petri Viitala 🇫🇮
♪ ♫@wonderofscience WOW! that is like a spinning jewel.
AugusTusk@wonderofscience A jewel of the Universe
Lyons
j2dumfounded 
Dazz
Nicole Göbel@wonderofscience beautiful 🥲
Mick Morris@wonderofscience stunningly beautiful
Nick Raschke@wonderofscience gosh look at that. Incredible.
Suebee2
Christian Johnson
Gornajur Jarjar@wonderofscience beautiful.. impressive 😃🌞🌞
Michael Gemar@wonderofscience @katedaley It’s extremely weird and almost disturbing to me that the Sun has such detailed, non-homogenous structure. It’s supposed to be just a big ball of flamey gas!
@michaelgemar @wonderofscience @katedaley It is, but not when you're looking at it in the hard ultraviolet, like here. The solar 'surface' or photosphere at a temp of ~6000K shines in the visible light and cuts off towards the UV. This image shows rarefied, much hotter gases (+ magnetic fields) well above the photosphere, making up the chromosphere and corona. This is where solar activity plays out.
@martinvermeer @wonderofscience @katedaley Isn’t it also the case that stars the size of the sun have convection currents that contribute to its non-homogenous nature?
@michaelgemar @wonderofscience @katedaley Precisely. It is the convection in the outer layers (together with differential rotation) that maintains the magnetic field inside the gas by a natural dynamo process. The wound-up magnetic field lines then rise to the surface in sunspots (which always consist of a N and a S pole), forming the 'arcs' in space you can see in the imagery, made visible by the hot plasma inside them.
Tucker Teague@wonderofscience Truly amazing
Trish 🇨🇦@wonderofscience Mesmerizing.
xs4me2@wonderofscience Amazing…
Saint Baal-MAŠ@wonderofscience A miasma of incandescent plasma.
@corvusbrimstone @wonderofscience Yep. Tell me you're looking at a magnetic field without telling me you're looking at a magnetic field.
French TexPat@wonderofscience best disco ball, ever!
Lee Dunn@wonderofscience
The Sun’s in streamers
Caloric redeemers
Limbic in their sway
Iambic in their deepened beat of day
The Sun’s in streamers
Caloric redeemers
Limbic in their sway
Iambic in their deepened beat of day
Charlotte Horseface@wonderofscience stunning!!! 😮
Luis Levy@wonderofscience Wow. Looks like something out of science fiction!