A Peek from SDO: An Eruption on the Solar Limb
- Visualizations by:
- Tom Bridgman
- Produced by:
- Scott Wiessinger
- View full credits
A large eruption occurs off the limb of the Sun (lower right) in this image sequence from May 2022.
What is the PSF (Point Spread-Function)?
Many telescopes, especially reflecting telescopes such as the ones used on SDO (Wikipedia), have internal structures that support various optical components. These components can result in incoming light being scattered to other parts of the image. This can appear in the image as a faint haze, brightening dark areas and dimming bright areas. The point-spread function (Wikipedia) is a measure of how light that would normally be received by a single camera pixel, gets scattered onto other pixels. This is often seen as the "spikes" seen in images of bright stars. For SDO, it manifests as a double-X shape centered over a bright flare (see Sun Emits Third Solar Flare in Two Days). The effect of this scattered light can be computed, and removed, by a process called deconvolution (Wikipedia). This is often a very compute-intensive process which can be sped up by using a computers graphics-processing unit (GPU) for the computation.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
Visualizer
- Tom Bridgman (GST) [Lead]
Producer
- Scott Wiessinger (KBRwyle) [Lead]
Technical support
- Ian Jones (ADNET)
- Laurence Schuler (ADNET)
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Datasets used in this visualization
SDO AIA 304 (A.K.A. 304 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.
Related pages
Sun Produces Sparkling Flare on May 19, 2022
May 25th, 2022
Read moreVideo of the May 19th M5.6 solar flare captured by SDO in 171 angstrom light. This view shows the full solar disk and an inset focusing on the region where the flare occured.Credit: NASA/GSFC/SDO Video of the May 19th M5.6 solar flare captured by SDO in 171 angstrom light. This clip begins with a close view of the Sun with the edge, or limb, for context and then cuts to an even closer view of the flaring reging to reveal all the fine detail.Credit: NASA/GSFC/SDO Still of the May 19th M5.6 solar flare captured by SDO in 171 angstrom light. This view shows the full solar disk and an inset focusing on the region where the flare occured.Credit: NASA/GSFC/SDO Animated GIF of the May 19th M5.6 solar flare captured by SDO in 171 angstrom light. Credit: NASA/GSFC/SDO 4k frame sequence and video of an M5.6 class solar flare on May 19, 2022. This sequence was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory with 36-second imaging cadence and shows light in the 131 angstrom wavelength.Credit: NASA/SDO 4k frame sequence and video of an M5.6 class solar flare on May 19, 2022. This sequence was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory with 36-second imaging cadence and shows light in the 131 angstrom wavelength.Credit: NASA/SDO On May 19, 2022 the Sun emitted a magnitude M5.6 flare that peaked at 3:19 EDT. This flare was unusual in that it was not a single, bright burst from one location, but a series of smaller flashes from all over a bright active region. The Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the event in extreme ultraviolet light which reveals the delicate structure of the Sun's lower atmosphere, called the corona. The sparkling flares are followed by brilliant loops of hot plasma, which "sticks" to the Sun's magnetic fields. Related pages