The Weather Channel India Profile picture
Jul 16, 2020 11 tweets 4 min read Read on X
#SolarOrbiter Captures Closest Images of the Sun; Reveals Presence of Millions of 'Campfires'

weather.com/en-IN/india/sc…

(Solar Orbiter/EUI Team (ESA & NASA); CSL, IAS, MPS, PMOD/WRC, ROB, UCL/MSSL)

By @MrigakshiDixit Image
#NASA and #ESA have released the first images of the Solar Orbiter, including the closest pictures ever taken of the Sun. These images were captured when the spacecraft completed its first close pass of the Sun in mid-June this year
Launched on February 10, 2020, the Solar Orbiter mission has carried several cutting-edge instruments to monitor the environment of the Earth’s closest star.
Through this mission, scientists aim to gain an in-depth understanding of the solar wind, and how it releases the stream of charged particles that influence the entire Solar System.
The first images from the mission detail the presence of millions of miniature-size solar flares—also referred to as 'campfires'—near the surface of the Sun. Image
#NASA describes solar flares as sudden explosions of energy caused by the tangling, crossing, or reorganising of magnetic field lines near sunspots.
The images were captured by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on May 30, 2020, from a distance of 77 million km from the Sun.
During this time, the Solar Orbiter was at the perihelion—a point in its elliptical orbit measured to be closest to the Sun—which is roughly half the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
With the help of more Orbiter data, scientists are aiming to demystify the mysterious coronal heating phenomenon and figure out what causes the corona to be so hot—a problem considered to be among the most vexing in astrophysics.
“These unprecedented pictures of the Sun are the closest we have ever obtained,” said Holly Gilbert, NASA project scientist for the mission at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.

(📸: : Solar Orbiter/EUI Team (ESA & NASA); CSL, IAS, MPS, PMOD/WRC, ROB, UCL/MSSL)
The EUI is programmed to take high-resolution images of the solar corona—which usually remains unexposed due to the bright light of the Sun’s surface and is, therefore, difficult to capture.

(Credits: Solar Orbiter/ PHI Team/ESA & NASA)

#SolarOrbiter

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with The Weather Channel India

The Weather Channel India Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @weatherindia

Aug 17, 2022
While searching for life in the Gulf of Mexico, researchers pulled out a new bizarre-looking species of isopod, whose head resembles the Darth Vader from Star Wars!

Read: weather.com/en-IN/india/bi…

By: @anujav_97

📸: Dr Ming-Chih H/Journal of Natural History

🧵👇
This new-found crustacean, named Bathonymus yucatanensis, has 14 legs and is around 26 cm long — approximately 25 times larger than its closest relative, the common woodlouse.
While these blonde creatures seem pretty scary, the "Vanilla Vaders" are, in fact, harmless to humans.

Their huge size is only due to deep-sea gigantism — a phenomenon wherein ocean dwellers grow bigger than their terrestrial relatives due to lack of sunlight.

📸: SJADES 2018
Read 7 tweets
Aug 16, 2022
The Sun spewed out two consecutive coronal mass ejections on August 14-15, giving rise to a 'Cannibal CME'.

The scarier part? It's heading towards the Earth this week & could spark strong geomagnetic storms on Aug 18!

Read: weather.com/en-IN/india/sp…

By: @ashmitagupta_21

🧵👇
A cloud of dark plasma erupted on the solar surface on Aug 14, launching a #CME that could side sweep the Earth's magnetic field.

Then, on Aug 15, an exploding magnetic filament launched another CME right at its tail.
This could be a Cannibal CME event where the second CME might overtake and gobble up the first, creating a mish-mash of the two.

Cannibal CMEs contain tangled magnetic fields and compressed plasmas that can spark strong geomagnetic storms.

📽️: Animation by Walt Feimer/NASA
Read 7 tweets
Aug 6, 2022
Japan's #Subaru Strategic Program has discovered a super-Earth four times the mass of our planet orbiting a red dwarf just 37 lightyears away.

The good news? This #exoplanet, named Ross 508b, might be habitable!

Read: weather.com/en-IN/india/sp…

By: @ashmitagupta_21

🧵👇 Image
This super-Earth is a rocky world, on which a year is equal to just 11 Earth days.

The short orbit is down to the red dwarfs being a lot smaller than the Sun that centres our solar system. But the smaller sizes also make their gravitational fields less expansive than the Sun's. Image
Therefore, Ross 508b revolves around its red dwarf at a distance of just 5 million km. Mercury, in comparison, is about 60 million km from the Sun.

The short distance between this super-Earth & its red dwarf begs the question: how could it possibly be habitable? Image
Read 7 tweets
Jul 15, 2022
#Japan is making grand plans of creating interplanetary #trains and champagne flute-like glass habitats in its bid to send and host humans on the #Moon and #Mars!

Read: weather.com/en-IN/india/sp…

📸: Youtube SC/Kajima Corp.

Thread. 👇
An interplanetary transportation system dubbed the 'Hexatrack', which maintains a gravity of 1G during long-distance travel to mitigate the effects of prolonged exposure to low gravity, has been proposed by #Japanese researchers.
The #trains will also possess 'Hexacapsules', which are essentially hexagon-shaped capsules with a moving device in the middle.
Read 7 tweets
Jul 14, 2022
A new species of #dinosaur has just dropped and word on the street is that it’s pretty similar to the #TRex

In fact, researchers think this discovery could explain why these beasts evolved to have tiny arms!

Read: weather.com/en-IN/india/sc…

📸: Jorge A Gonzalez

Thread. 👇 Image
In 2012, the almost-complete skeleton of a new kind of #dinosaur was found in the northern Patagonia region of #Argentina.

The dinosaur has been christened #Meraxes gigas. The generic epithet is an ode to a dragon in the #GameOfThrones series.
Standing at the height of 11 m (36 ft) and weighing roughly 4000 kgs, the #dinosaur sported several crests, bumps and horns on its skull, which lent it a menacing appearance.

But the highlight of the findings is that the dinosaur had teeny-tiny arms, just like the #Trex! Image
Read 6 tweets
Jul 14, 2022
#NASA-led #JamesWebbSpaceTelescope's breathtaking images of the universe's past have taken the world by storm.

As we inch closer to unravelling more cosmic secrets, here's how researchers from #India plan to use the #JWST.

Read: weather.com/en-IN/india/sp…

Thread👇
#NASA had opened up submissions for Guaranteed Time Observations to reward scientists with 16% use of the JWST observatory for the first 3 cycles.

Out of the 1,173 proposals, two astronomers hail from India: Dr #JessyJose from @IiserTirupati & Dr #Puravankara from @TIFRScience.
Dr Jose, along with an international research team from the US, UK and Australia, will be examining the Galactic Centre Cloud (GCC) — the central molecular zone of our Milky Way — in April 2023.

They have been allotted 27.3 hours over the access period of 12 months.
Read 8 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(