Posted by A telescope carried by balloon to the edge of Earth’s stratosphere has returned the most detailed video of the sun’s surface to date.
Released Wednesday by an international research team led by astronomers from Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the video shows what the naked human eye could never see, even if we could look at the sun without blinding ourselves.
Near-ultraviolet wavelengths and magnetic fields are visualized on the video, which is all the more clear because telescope’s stratospheric positioning puts it beyond the light-scattering veil of Earth’s atmosphere.
If you can’t get enough solar video, then check out the footage below, which was taken by NASA’s STEREO spacecraft and released in October. It takes a wide-angle perspective, and shows filaments formed by cooling gas and bound by magnetic fields as they waft across the sun.
Videos: 1. Max Planck Institute 2. NASA
See Also:
- Photo: The Sun Gets Its Spots (Back)
- Big Solar Flare Portends Sun’s Return to Normal
- Photo: Docked Space Shuttle and Station Cross the Sun
- How NPR Stays on Air as Sun Blanks Sat Transmission
- First View of the Dark Side of the Sun
Brandon Keim’s Twitter stream and reportorial outtakes; Wired Science on Twitter. Brandon is currently working on a book about ecosystem and planetary tipping points.
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