Growing Sunspots - Tracking Closeup: February 2011
Visualizations by
Tom Bridgman
Released on January 27, 2012
This visualization tracks the emergence and evolution of a sunspot group as seen by SDO/HMI starting in early February 2011 and continuing for two weeks. Images are sampled one hour apart.
In this version, the camera tracks the movement of the solar rotation.
At this scale, a 'shimmer' of the solar surface is visible, created by the turnover of convection cells. A higher-resolution view of these convection cells can be seen in Hinode imagery (see entry #3412, Hinode's High-resolution view of solar granulation).
GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation:
Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0