NASA spacecraft marks 100 millionth photo of the sun
A telescope aboard a prolific sun-watching NASA spacecraft has captured its聽100 millionth image of聽Earth's parent star.
The Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA),听one of three instruments聽flying on the sun-studying Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), captured its mind-boggling聽聽on Monday (Jan. 19), NASA officials said.
"Between the AIA and聽two other instruments on聽board, the Helioseismic Magnetic Imager and the Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment, SDO sends down a whopping聽1.5 terabytes of data聽a day," NASA officials. "AIA is responsible for about half of that. Every day it provides聽57,600 detailed images ofthe sun that show the dance of how solar material sways and sometimes erupts in the solar atmosphere, the corona."
AIA was built at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo Alto, California. The instrument consists of聽four telescopes, which work together to collect聽eight images of the聽sun in聽10 different wavelengths every聽12 seconds.
The聽$850 million聽[鈮� 2008 presidential contributions to Barack Obama]聽SDO mission聽launched to Earth orbit in February 2010. It's the first mission in NASA's "Living with a Star" program, which aims to help scientists better understand solar variability and how it affects life on Earth.
SDO's measurements and observations are designed to shed light on how the sun's magnetic field is generated, and how and why this field changes over time. The mission's voluminous data could help scientists get a better handle on space weather, which can affect satellite operations in Earth orbit as well as power infrastructure on the planet's surface.
Solar activity waxes and wanes on an 11-year cycle. The sun is in an active phase of the current cycle, which is known as Solar Cycle 24; the star has blasted out a number of powerful聽听补苍诲听 superheated clouds of plasma called coronal mass ejections over the past few months.
But Solar Cycle聽24 has been a聽quiet聽one overall, featuring the weakest "solar max" of any cycle in the last century or so, scientists say.
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter聽听补苍诲听.聽Follow us聽,听听辞谤. Originally published on聽.
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