Telescope on NASA's SDO Collects Its 100 Millionth Image
On Jan. 19, 2015, at 12:49 p.m. EST, an instrument on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured its 100 millionth image of the sun. The instrument is the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly, or AIA, which gathers uses four telescopes working parallel to gather eight images of the sun – cycling through 10 different wavelengths -- every 12 seconds.
Between the AIA and two other instruments on board, the Helioseismic Magnetic Imager and the Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment, SDO sends down a whopping 1.5 terabytes of data a day. AIA is responsible for about half of that. Every day it provides 57,600 detailed images of the sun that show the dance of how solar material sways and sometimes erupts in the solar atmosphere, the corona.
In the almost five years since its launch on Feb. 11, 2010, SDO has provided images of the sun to help scientists better understand how the roiling corona gets to temperatures some 1000 times hotter than the sun's surface, what causes giant eruptions such as solar flares, and why the sun's magnetic fields are constantly on the move.
In honor of the 100 millionth image, Dean Pesnell, SDO's project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and Karel Schrijver, the AIA principal investigator at Lockheed Martin in Palo Alto, California, chose some of their favorite images produced by SDO so far.
This mosaic of AIA's 100 millionth image is created from previous AIA images – each tile in the mosaic is 50 pixels across. Zoom in to see each tile. All the sun pictures used in the mosaic show extreme ultraviolet light with a wavelength of 193 angstroms. At maximum resolution the mosaic is 15,000 pixels on a side and each tile is 50 pixels per side.
Credit: NASA/SDO/Mosaic created with AndreaMosaic.
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Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. However, individual images should be credited as indicated above.
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Writer
- Karen Fox (ADNET Systems, Inc.)
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Producers
- Genna Duberstein (ADNET)
- Scott Wiessinger (KBR Wyle Services, LLC)
Datasets used in this visualization
SDO
Dataset can be found at: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/
See more visualizations using this data setSDO AIA 193 (A.K.A. 193 Filter) (Collected with the AIA sensor)
Dataset can be found at: http://jsoc.stanford.edu/
See more visualizations using this data setNote: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.
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ID: 12980 Produced Video
Swift Millionth Image Mosaic
Read moreThis mosaic of the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory is created from images of astronomical objects captured by the satellite’s Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope which recently captured its millionth image. Each tile is 52 x 39 pixels, and at maximum resolution, the entire mosaic is 5,252 x 3,744 pixels. Zoom in to see each tile more clearly. Credit: NASA/Swift and AndreaMosaic || The Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) aboard the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory captured its millionth image on May 13, 2018. It took an image of an active galaxy called 2MASX J16110570+0234002, which scientists think exhibited some unusual behavior. A mosaic, created using images UVOT has taken since Swift launched in 2004, celebrates this major milestone for the mission. UVOT monitors the optical and ultraviolet afterglow of gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe. Swift’s two other instruments observe these bursts in X-rays and gamma rays. The explosions only last for a few seconds, but Swift can autonomously respond to a burst detection within two minutes and bring the event into view for follow-up observations. Swift was renamed in January 2018 to honor the late Neil Gehrels, who served as the mission’s principle investigator. Imagery for this mosaic came from here and here. ||
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