Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Hats Off to the Solar Dynamics Observatory



Remember that video I shot of the launch of the Solar Dynamics Observatory? That was cool. Snell's Law FTW.

And look what it's doing now. This makes me cry. Full of awe. Awesome. I watched the livestream of the activities in Fairbanks, AL for the Venus transit. I never got the name of the guy in the blue shirt with the SDO logo that did most of the talking but he was really good. Thanks, whoever you are. I miss listening to smart people talk.



One thing the presenter explained during the live presentation was why you can see the sun THROUGH Venus as it crosses the limb. Of course you can't really. At first he blamed it on the projector and he had an audience member look at it on the laptop screen. He saw it there too. So the presenter changed his explanation. Science happening before our eyes. The new explanation was because SDO was updating images faster than usual. They were only fully zeroing out the CCD sensor every minute and a half. He said some shitty digital cameras do this residual image too. You can see some of the last picture you took. Here's an explanation of CCD dark image ghosting that @RojSmith found and forwarded to me on Twitter yesterday when we were both watching the same livestream and swapping remarks.

1 comment:

  1. now i want a satellite or probe to catch video of earth transiting the sun just 'cause.

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