SDO Lunar Transit, Prominence Eruption, and M-Class Flare
- Visualizations by:
- Tom Bridgman
- View full credits
A movie of the Jan 30, 2014 lunar transit. The movie shows the sun moving quite a bit because SDO has a hard time keeping the sun centered in the image during a transit, because the moon blocks so much light. The fine guidance systems on the SDO instruments need to see the whole sun in order keep the images centered from exposure to exposure. Once the transit was over, the fine guidance systems started back up, once again providing steady images of the sun.
The moon passes in front of the sun in this movie captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory on Jan. 30, 2014. Shortly after that, a solar flare erupts, as seen by the bright flash on the left side of the sun.
Note in the pictures how crisp the horizon is on the moon, a reflection of the fact that the moon has no atmosphere around it to distort the light from the sun.
The sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 11:11 a.m. EST on Jan. 30, 2014. Images of the flare were captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, shortly after the observatory witnessed a lunar transit. The black disk of the moon can be seen in the lower right of the images.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Animator
- Tom Bridgman (GST) [Lead]
Writer
- Karen Fox (ADNET)
Video editor
- Scott Wiessinger (KBRwyle)
Producers
- Genna Duberstein (ADNET)
- Scott Wiessinger (KBRwyle)
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Tapes
This visualization originally appeared on the following tapes:- None