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The Sun
Our Very Own Star
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Assembled By
Ken Mitchell
Livermore TOPScience
dtd; 3/15/09
Earth’s Four Seasons
SOHO's Uninterrupted View of the Sun
Solar Prominence from SOHO
See Notes
HR Diagram - Star Sequence
Cutaway of Our Only Thermonuclear Power Plant
Cutaway Diagram of the Sun
See Notes
Sunspots
From Hinode’s
Optical Telescope
See Notes
The biggest of the new-cycle spots emerged at the end of the
month on Halloween (2008). Numbered 1007, or "double-oh
seven" for short, the sunspot had two dark cores each wider
than Earth connected by active magnetic filaments thousands of
kilometers long. See Notes.
Twisted Solar Eruptive Prominence
See Notes
Small prominences extend from the
chromosphere up into the lower corona.
See Notes
SOHO Best Sun Photo
Solar Prominence Extending Millions of Miles
from the Sun's Surface
See Notes
A Solar Prominence from SOHO
Sunspot Loops in Ultraviolet
Heavy Ultraviolet Filtering Darkens Inactive Regions of the Sun
Dark See
SunNotes
Sizzling
The Sun’s Corona
See Notes
The Solar Spectrum
See Notes
Solar System Raising Over Fire Island
See explanation on next slide
Solar System Rising Over Fire Island
Explanation: If you wait long enough, the entire Solar System
will rise before you. To see such a sight, however, you will need
to look in the direction of the ecliptic. All of the planets and their
moons orbit the Sun in nearly the same plane, the ecliptic plane.
From the Earth, this means that each day they will all rise in
nearly the same direction - and later set in the opposite direction.
Ten years ago, a series of time exposures caught, left to right, the
Sun, Venus, the Moon, and Jupiter, all rising in the ecliptic plane
behind Fire Island, New York, USA. Exposures were taken every
six minutes and digitally superposed on an image taken from the
same location at sunrise. Smaller members of our Solar System,
including most comets and many asteroids, do not always move
along the ecliptic plane. The picturesque Fire Island Lighthouse,
visible in the foreground, was built in 1826 and is still in use
today.
Ulysses Solar Orbit of the Sun -- (Solar Polar Flyby?)
Red dots denote 10
or more flares in a
month.
Yellow dots 3 to 9
flares.
Green dots 1 or 2
flares.
Frequency of X-flares during the last three solar cycles
The Sun’s Solar Activity Cycle
Solar Cycle 23 is coming to an end
The longest minimum on record, the Maunder Minimum of
1645-1715, lasted an incredible 70 years. Sunspots were
rarely observed and the solar cycle seemed to have broken
down completely. The period of quiet coincided with the
Little Ice Age, a series of extraordinarily bitter winters in
Earth's northern hemisphere. Many researchers are
convinced that low solar activity, acting in concert with
increased volcanism and possible changes in ocean current
patterns, played a role in that 17th century cooling. See Notes.
Analemma and the
Temple of Zeus
See Notes
Voyager 1 Passes into the Heliosheath
See Note
Our Sun’s Life Cycle
See Notes