Friday, April 30, 2010

First light from SDO.....and a little fuzz!

The SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory) launched just a few days after the STS-130 launch that I was at in early February.  It's now operational and sending back HD video of the sun.  Pretty amazing video!
Notice how the plasma from the prominence seems to rain down on the surface and splash as it hits.
Notice that dark line just above the surface?   That isn't an alien spacecraft, giant space worm or anything.....it's a piece of DUST possibly from some human technician who had a leak in his clean room bunny suit!
I can relate to that frustration since I very often suffer the same fate with my camera sensor when doing astrophotography.  I can just use my special cleaning fluid, very soft lens tissue and clean it up myself (carefully).  But the SDO is 22,000 miles up, unreachable, and not coming back down.  The dust will probably have to just be edited out unless the SDO guys have some tricks to shake it loose!


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