When I saw the title, I was getting ready to cross my eyes and watch the sun pop out of my screen. Damn. This is still cool though. posted by reformedjerk at 7:35 AM on February 9, 2011 [2 favorites]
They're just setting you up to pay through the nose for the mono box set a few decades later. posted by Wolfdog at 7:59 AM on February 9, 2011
When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six I did. posted by Cat Pie Hurts at 8:16 AM on February 9, 2011 [2 favorites]
>When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six I did.
I can't recall which offhand, but certain groups of the Native American Pueblo people had a priest class that typically went blind from observing the Sun. posted by Burhanistan at 8:24 AM on February 9, 2011
I was expecting stereoscopic images. posted by JJ86 at 9:10 AM on February 9, 2011
NASA has released the first STEREO images of the entire sun.
Shit, that's nothin' man, my van has got quadro-fuckin'-phonics (not to mention wall-to-wall shag and a bitchin' airbrush of a wizard)! posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 9:37 AM on February 9, 2011
I was expecting stereoscopic images.
Yeah, STEREO is an acronym. The descriptive "stereo," in sound and images, is rooted in "solid, as if carved from stone." It was not originally meant to denote specifically two source components. The components are epected to triangulate a volume in space. These, from opposite sides, have no overlapping data to triangulate on, so not really "stereo" as normally understood. posted by StickyCarpet at 9:38 AM on February 9, 2011
StickyCarpet- thanks for making the word "stereotype" make much more sense to me! posted by Jpfed at 10:05 AM on February 9, 2011
I prefer the Sun in 5.1 Dolby. posted by Splunge at 1:10 PM on February 9, 2011
Sweet! I don't follow cosmology all that closely, but I've been reading a lot about the recent developments in heliophysics and it is super-interesting. I had no idea there were Space Weather Forecasters (which would make an excellent before-and-after on Wheel of Fortune). We're in a pretty special space-time right now, and it seems like we're going to be able to take good advantage of it. From what I understand, the current solar minimum is giving us a pretty clear view of things, our solar system is passing through some unique ionized spaces, and we've got a lot of instruments watching what's happening.
One of the coolest things to me is how available the data is - I can just load up near-real-time images of almost the entire sun, which is simply stellar (yes, I did). So what have we learned? Welll....
IBEX, in conjunction with a re-purposing of the Cassini spacecraft, has told us "our heliosphere more closely resembles a bubble - or a rat - being eaten by a boa constrictor: as the solar system passes through the "belly" of the snake, the ribs, which mimic the local interstellar magnetic field, expand and contract as the rat passes."
If that's not enough to BLOW THE TOP OFF YOUR FUCKING HEAD, Cluster and THEMIS have encountered Flux Transfer Events, proving that "A magnetic portal will open, linking Earth to the sun 93 million miles away. Tons of high-energy particles may flow through the opening before it closes again, around the time you reach the end of the page. [...] On the dayside of Earth (the side closest to the sun), Earth's magnetic field presses against the sun's magnetic field. Approximately every eight minutes, the two fields briefly merge or "reconnect," forming a portal through which particles can flow. The portal takes the form of a magnetic cylinder about as wide as Earth." WTF? YES. posted by nTeleKy at 3:19 PM on February 9, 2011 [4 favorites]
posted by Burhanistan at 7:13 AM on February 9, 2011