5 ms·

I want to see a picture of the sun in the visible spectrum taken in free space or from the moon.

by eip 12y ago

anon4 12y ago
That would look pretty much like what you'd see if you photographed the sun from earth on a clear day and replaced all the blue sky with pitch black.
- eip 12y ago
  So show me one.
kryptiskt 12y ago
This is the sun right now: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/hmi_igr/1024/latest.jpg http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/hmi_igr/1024/la... "The MDI (Michelson Doppler Imager) images shown here are taken in the continuum near the Ni I 6768 Angstrom line. The most prominent features are the sunspots. This is very much how the Sun looks like in the visible range of the spectrum (for example, looking at it using special 'eclipse' glasses: Remember, do not ever look directly at the Sun!). The magnetogram image shows the magnetic field in the solar photosphere, with black and white indicating opposite polarities. " from: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/realtime-update.html http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/realtime-update...
- pavel_lishin 12y ago
  I'm trying to use http://seal.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gui_seal http://seal.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gui_seal to get some of the recent images from that particular instrument, but can't figure it out - no results are returned for my search query: http://i.imgur.com/ANlgBT4.png http://i.imgur.com/ANlgBT4.png Anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Edit: this might be a better resource, and can automatically show you an animated sequence: http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/data_query http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/data_query
  - mturmon 12y ago
    MDI is no longer operational. It operated from 1996-2010. So your query for 2015 comes up empty. The successor instrument is called HMI, which returns 4096^2 images on a pretty fast cadence (45s or 720s depending on your purposes). It is much superior to MDI. The HMI instrument team is at Stanford University, so I'd point you there for data rather than to the NASA site, which offers a lot of sources and seems to suffer from a least-common-denominator effect. Recent HMI quick look products are here: http://jsoc.stanford.edu/data/hmi/images/latest/ http://jsoc.stanford.edu/data/hmi/images/latest/ There is a back-catalog of JPEG images for browsing: http://hmi.stanford.edu/data/hmiimage.html http://hmi.stanford.edu/data/hmiimage.html For science purposes, you can get FITS data from http://jsoc.stanford.edu http://jsoc.stanford.edu . There are a lot of data products -- intensity, magnetic field (line-of-sight and vector), velocity, tracked regions, etc., as well as near-real-time analogs of much of this data (not as well-calibrated, but arrives within a couple hours of being taken). There is no embargo on this data. They just expect acknowledgement (http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/rules.php http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/rules.php).
    - pavel_lishin 12y ago
      Thank you!
      - mturmon 12y ago
        My pleasure. I developed a data product for both instruments.
- mturmon 12y ago
  That's a good pointer, but that data is from HMI, not MDI (i.e., the paragraph of text is a bit off). The spectral lines are different, although this makes only a little difference in what you see.
- eip 12y ago
  Those are pictures of the reflection of the light from the sun off of a mirror. "The final elements, a pair of tunable Michelson interferometers, enable MDI to record filtergrams with a FWHM bandwidth of 94 mÅ. Normally 20 images centered at 5 wavelengths near the Ni I 6768 spectral line are recorded each minute."

I want to see a picture of the sun in the visible spectrum taken in free space or from the moon.

by eip 12y ago

I want to see a picture of the sun in the visible spectrum taken in free space or from the moon.

anon4 12y ago

That would look pretty much like what you'd see if you photographed the sun from earth on a clear day and replaced all the blue sky with pitch black.

eip 12y ago
So show me one.

kryptiskt 12y ago

This is the sun right now: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/hmi_igr/1024/latest.jpg http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/hmi_igr/1024/la... "The MDI (Michelson Doppler Imager) images shown here are taken in the continuum near the Ni I 6768 Angstrom line. The most prominent features are the sunspots. This is very much how the Sun looks like in the visible range of the spectrum (for example, looking at it using special 'eclipse' glasses: Remember, do not ever look directly at the Sun!). The magnetogram image shows the magnetic field in the solar photosphere, with black and white indicating opposite polarities. " from: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/realtime-update.html http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/realtime-update...

pavel_lishin 12y ago
I'm trying to use http://seal.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gui_seal http://seal.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gui_seal to get some of the recent images from that particular instrument, but can't figure it out - no results are returned for my search query: http://i.imgur.com/ANlgBT4.png http://i.imgur.com/ANlgBT4.png Anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Edit: this might be a better resource, and can automatically show you an animated sequence: http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/data_query http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/data_query
- mturmon 12y ago
  MDI is no longer operational. It operated from 1996-2010. So your query for 2015 comes up empty. The successor instrument is called HMI, which returns 4096^2 images on a pretty fast cadence (45s or 720s depending on your purposes). It is much superior to MDI. The HMI instrument team is at Stanford University, so I'd point you there for data rather than to the NASA site, which offers a lot of sources and seems to suffer from a least-common-denominator effect. Recent HMI quick look products are here: http://jsoc.stanford.edu/data/hmi/images/latest/ http://jsoc.stanford.edu/data/hmi/images/latest/ There is a back-catalog of JPEG images for browsing: http://hmi.stanford.edu/data/hmiimage.html http://hmi.stanford.edu/data/hmiimage.html For science purposes, you can get FITS data from http://jsoc.stanford.edu http://jsoc.stanford.edu . There are a lot of data products -- intensity, magnetic field (line-of-sight and vector), velocity, tracked regions, etc., as well as near-real-time analogs of much of this data (not as well-calibrated, but arrives within a couple hours of being taken). There is no embargo on this data. They just expect acknowledgement (http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/rules.php http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/rules.php).
  - pavel_lishin 12y ago
    Thank you!
    - mturmon 12y ago
      My pleasure. I developed a data product for both instruments.
mturmon 12y ago
That's a good pointer, but that data is from HMI, not MDI (i.e., the paragraph of text is a bit off). The spectral lines are different, although this makes only a little difference in what you see.
eip 12y ago
Those are pictures of the reflection of the light from the sun off of a mirror. "The final elements, a pair of tunable Michelson interferometers, enable MDI to record filtergrams with a FWHM bandwidth of 94 mÅ. Normally 20 images centered at 5 wavelengths near the Ni I 6768 spectral line are recorded each minute."