Sun ID: 2553

A Multi-Mission View of the AR9906 Solar Flare with Alternate Instrument Labels

Visualizations by Tom Bridgman Released on January 31, 2003

Here's a view of the Sun, from the point of view of a fleet of Sun-observing spacecraft - SOHO, TRACE, and RHESSI. The time scales of the data samples in this visualization range from 6 hours to as short as 12 seconds and the display rate varies throughout the movie. The region and event of interest is the solar flare over solar active region AR9906 on April 21, 2002. In this visualization, black corresponds to no (current) instrument coverage (there used to be a LASCO C1 camera inside the ring of LASCO C2, but that instrument didn't recover after SOHO was temporarily 'lost' in 1998).

Slate title from video tape reads, 'A Multi-Mission View of the AR9906 Solar Flare with Alternate Instrument Labels. Here's a view of the Sun, from the point of view of a fleet of Sun-observing spacecraft - SOHO, TRACE, and RHESSI. The time scales of the data samples in this visualization range from six hours to as short as 12 seconds and the display rate varies throughout the movie. The region and even of interest is the solar flare over solar active region AR9906 on April 21, 2002. In this visualization, black corresponds to no (current) insturment coverage (there used to be a LASCO C1 camera inside the ring of LASCO C2, but that instrument did not recover after SOHO was temporarily lost in 1998).'

Visualization Credits

Tom Bridgman (Global Science and Technology, Inc.): Lead Animator

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio. A special thanks to all those who contributed data and advice without which this product would not have been possible (in no particular order): Alexander Kosovichev (Stanford University), Todd Hoeksema (Stanford University), Steele Hill (L-3 Communications Analytics Corporation/GSFC), Brian R. Dennis (NASA/GSFC), Peter T. Gallagher (L-3 Communications Analytics Corporation/GSFC), Joseph B. Gurman (NASA/GSFC), Nathan Rich (Interferometrics Inc./NRL), Bernhard Fleck (NASA/GSFC), Craig DeForest (SwRI), Philip Scherrer (Stanford University)

Short URL to share this page:
https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/2553

Missions:
RHESSI
SOHO
TRACE

Data Used:

RHESSI/X-ray Imaging Spectrometer

2002/04/21T00:42:52-2002/04/21T01:32:18

The RHESSI instrument is an imaging spectrometer observing the Sun at X-ray to gamma-rays (photon energies of 3 keV to 17 MeV) at time resolutions of a few seconds. (eV stands for "electron volt" and is a unit of energy. Note that photons of visible light have energies of 2-3 eV. 1 keV is a thousand electron volts and 1 MeV is a million electron volts.

http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/hessi/

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