A Complete Solar Cycle from SOHO
Credit: SOHO - EIT Consortium, ESA, NASA
Explanation: Every eleven years, our Sun goes through a solar cycle. A complete solar cycle has now been imaged by the sun-orbiting SOHO spacecraft, celebrating the 12th anniversary of its launch yesterday. A solar cycle is caused by the changing magnetic field of the Sun, and varies from solar maximum, when sunspot, coronal mass ejection, and flare phenomena are most frequent, to solar minimum, when such activity is relatively infrequent. Solar minimums occurred in 1996 and 2007, while the last solar maximum occurred in 2001 Pictured above is a SOHO image of the Sun in extreme ultraviolet light for each year of the last solar cycle, with images picked to illustrate the relative activity of the Sun.
18 comments:
Wha..? Global warming is cyclic?
Nooooooo! No one tell Al!
Well, SOHO is science, so my guess is Al wouldn't believe it anyhow...
No, the Sun is controlled by the Kyoto agreement.
~Al Gore
Ha ha ha ha ha!!! Yep. Humans control the universe!
Arrogant bunch, what?
Good morning, G*D bless and Maranatha!
tmw
Didn't know that my Tahoe was causing Mars to warm up...
Have you noticed how bright the Moon is lately? Is that caused by NYC?
Top O the Morning TMW, I haven't noticed that the moon looks brighter. Could you be getting more winds than normal?
No, actually several scientists(that I read in passing) have said that teir measurements of the moon's brightness have increased. Which is an indication of the sun's changes...not NYC's lights!
Good morning, G*D bless and Maranatha!
tmw
So don't tell algore the tree, he would have a hard time trying to figure out another 'cause' to exploit!
Cyclic changes... it's a law of the universe.
Yes, the Martian polar icecaps have been melting too. Algore says it's merely a coinky-dink.
The solar wind blows away the earth's excess heat in huge plasma bubbles on the back side of the magnetosphere/ tail. The earth will never overheat.
Of course, none of this heat can escape the heliopause... so our local interstitial bubble is getting hotter.... I think Voyager just crossed this boundary a year or two ago...
FJ, what do you do? You must be a science teacher or some such thing....
Aerospace... ;-)
Eyes-He would probably make a good aerospace teacher...the lectures wouldn't be boring!
Good morning, G*D bless and Maranatha!
tmw
Engineer?
Not any more. Strictly 'management' these days.
:>D Sounds like fun! Not. I guess it would be fun to manage projects,,,, the people would drive me crazy. In my previous life I was a 'team leader' for a number of projects, and it was horrible dealing with all those egos...
The SOHO/NRL Team is a pretty good bunch to work with. I think that's pretty true outside of HQ for most of NASA, as well. I think the science community moderates the ego's of the managers/ engineers... after all, they've got most of the Nobel's... and they're always acting like a bunch of kids.
So it's a lot like babysitting... ;-)
FJ, sounds like a good group of people, for sure. I was in semiconductors, and there's a lot of competition there, so it was probably different. Also, the particular company I'm thinking of was French - need I say more? Hee, hee, hee!
Post a Comment