Buy this Sunspot Close-up space photo. High quality SST picture, slide, or Duratrans backlit transparency. Swedish Solar Telescope photograph SST-AR-10030b. Wide variety of sizes. The Sharpest View of the Sun Photo Credit: SST, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Description Credit: Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)
Explanation:
This stunning image shows remarkable and mysterious details
near the dark central region of a planet-sized
sunspot
in one of
the sharpest views ever
of the surface
of
the Sun.
Just released,
the picture was made using the
Swedish Solar Telescope now in its
first year of operation
on the Canary Island of La Palma.
Along with features described as hairs and canals are dark cores
visible within the bright filaments that extend into the sunspot,
representing previously unknown and unexplored
solar phenomena.
The filaments' newly revealed dark cores are seen to be
thousands of kilometers long but only about 100 kilometers wide.
Resolving features 100 kilometers wide or less is a milestone
in solar astronomy and has been achieved here
using sophisticated adaptive optics, digital image stacking, and
processing techniques to counter the
blurring effect of Earth's
atmosphere.
At optical wavelengths,
these images are sharper than even
current space-based solar observatories
can produce.
Recorded on 15 July 2002, the sunspot shown is the largest of
the group of sunspots cataloged as solar active region
AR 10030. |