Download SDO | SOLAR DYNAMICS OBSERVATORY HTTP://WWW.NASA

2016
NoCoAstro
SDO | SOLAR DYNAMICS OBSERVATORY
HTTP://WWW.NASA.GOV/MISSION_PAGES/SDO/MAIN/INDEX.HTML
WHAT TO EXPECT THIS YEAR
This year we’re taking a detailed look at our tiny little home in this tiny little part
of the Milky Way in our tiny little corner of the universe. Yes, we’ll be getting to
know the itty bitty - yet wonderful - little place we call our solar system. We’ll
begin our journey at the amazing, beautiful and still oh-so-mysterious sun. Then,
we’ll take each planet one at a time, stopping off at a few other astronomical
objects just to see what they're up to. You don’t want to miss this!
EDITOR
Amanda Bell
Januar y
CONTACT
Questions, comments, submissions, photos or just to say ‘hello’:
ObjView at NoCoAstro dot org
PY
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NoCoAstro
Join us for our monthly awesomely-nerdy astro talk:
Date: February 4th, 6:15pm
Speaker: Zach Schierl,
NoCoAstro Member & Volunteer
DID YOU KNOW…? All meetings are FREE & open to the public!
Just stop by the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery.
NOCOASTRO OUTREACH
12th, Friday
20th, Saturday
26th, Friday
Fossil Creek Reservoir Skygazing
Timnath Elementary School - school STEM festival
Fossil Creek Reservoir Skygazing
Januar y
FEBRUARY
NOCOASTRO MEETING
LET’S BEGIN OUR JOURNEY:
THE SUN
What better place to begin our journey than the place around which our lives revolve, literally?
DETAILS
AGE: Our sun is a healthy, happy middle-age of about 4.6 billion years. Space may appear empty but it's actually quite full of
dust and gas. Thanks to gravity, this material gathers together to form large clouds. This is how our solar
system began, so many years ago. Over vast amounts of time, a cloud of debris became so dense
that it began to collapse in on itself. This collapse caused a protostar to form at the center. Only
after enough time - in this case, about fifty million years - was enough pressure and heat
created to form a star: our sun. The rest of the cloud would eventually became the bits and
bobs of our solar system… but more on that in future newsletters.
RADIUS: 695,000 km. This may sound large but it’s really just a medium-sized star.
Watch these people guess the size of the sun.
DISTANCE (MM) TO PLANETS:
Mercury: 57,910
Earth: 149,600
Venus: 108,200
Mars: 227,940
...but why do these distances matter?
Jupiter: 778,330
Saturn: 1,426,940
Uranus: 2,870,990
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Januar y
SIZE: This one is a little tricky. Do we care about mass? Density? Radius? Of course, the sun
trumps everything (at least in our solar system) on all counts but the details are fascinating. Compare objects in our
neighborhood.
ROTATION: Observing sunspots is how astronomers realized the sun rotates on its axis. However, because the sun isn’t
solid, different regions rotate at different rates: about 24 Earth days at the equator & 30 days at the poles.
NoCoAstro
MORE SUN
COMPOSITION: Like most stars, the Sun is mostly hydrogen: approximately 72% hydrogen, 26% helium with 2% made
of other metals (by mass). Of course, the sun is constantly converting hydrogen to helium in its core. In fact, 620 million metric
tons of hydrogen are fused every second! That means the concentration of elements will also change over time - lots of time.
Since its formation, the sun has used about half of the hydrogen in its core. This means the sun still has enough fuel to rage for
another 4.5 billion years, give or take. So, don't worry. There is still plenty of hydrogen for our sun to keep doing what it does
best - growing the tastiest veggies and keeping us warm on sunny days - at least for another billion years or so. Around that
time, however, radical (read: excess heat & light) changes will begin to occur to our sun,
our planet and the rest of the solar system. Eventually our sun will swell into a magnificent
giant whose radius will reach all the way to Earth’s orbit! As you can imagine, one of the
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many changes for our solar system will be the total destruction of all life on planet Earth.
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Don’t worry, this isn’t going to happen tomorrow. ...but what is (probably) going to happen?
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BRIGHTNESS: The sun has an absolute magnitude of +4.83 and an apparent
magnitude of -26.7… but what exactly does a star’s magnitude tell you?
CLASSIFICATION: Our sun is a ‘G2V’ class star, which makes it a middle-of-the-
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TEMPERATURE: 5800 K or10k degrees F (surface), 15,600,000 K or 27M degrees F (core). At these temperatures, how
close could you get to the sun?
NoCoAstro
Januar y
road kind of star. You know, it’s neither very hot nor very cold. Let’s say that it’s juuuuuuust
right! To understand what G2V means, let’s learn about basic stellar classification: We use a
fairly simple system of letters — O, B, A, F, G, K, M, with the cooler M-class being the most
common. Once you know the letter (based on it’s temperature), you can subdivide it for
more precision from 0 (hotter) to 9 (cooler). We also track luminosity, or how bright is a
star, with the numerals from I down to VII. Why do we need to know these things? Well,
temperature can tell you about a star’s mass, length of life, brightness and even how its life
might end. How do we know what stars are made of or what their future holds? Sixty Symbols explains it best.
NEW SOLAR
POWER RECORD:
NASA’s Juno mission has just become
humanity’s most distant solar-powered
object at about 493 million miles (~5
AU) from the Sun! Juno is a marvelous
4-ton spacecraft with three 30-ft long
solar arrays that contain a whopping
18,698 individual
solar cells. DID
YOU KNOW?…
“the sunlight
that reaches
that far out
packs 25 times
less punch,” says
Juno’s project
manager. Learn more
about this amazing accomplishment!
W
Januar y
!
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ATMOSPHERE:
Yes, the sun has an atmosphere! There
are three main layers. The lowest layer
is the photosphere, which is about 100
km thick. This is the visible surface
where the sun’s energy is released as
light. Next up you’ll find the
chromosphere, which is 2,000 km deep
and literally means ‘sphere of color’.
Many phenomena can be observed in
this layer: filaments, spicules, periodic
oscillations and even cool loops, which
are similar to prominences but
concentric and cooler. The uppermost
layer is the corona, extending millions
of kilometers into space. How do
these processes affect the near-earth
environment and even space travel?
Read more processes known as space
weather.
UNDERSTANDING
SOLAR CYCLES:
Our sun undergoes a cycle, from most
to least activity, every 9-14 years.
Historically, sunspots have been the
only way for scientists to understand
our sun’s fascinating behavior - even
though sunspots aren’t even very well
understood. Now scientists are using
brightpoints, areas of extreme
ultraviolet & x-ray light, which may be
like windows to what’s actually
happening inside the sun’s mysterious
innards. It is thought that each
hemisphere has two symmetrical,
grand loops, like massive conveyor
belts, that move material & magnetic
fields. There's much more to know about
the sun's complex magnetic fields....
OTHER NEARBY ASTRONOMY STUFF
Chamberlin Observatory:
University of Denver’s historical observatory. Website
Sommers-Bausch Observatory:
Boulder, Colorado. Website.
Little Thompson Observatory:
Berthoud, Colorado. Free! Many youth programs. Website.
Fiske Planetarium:
Boulder, Colorado. Website.
Januar y
Stargazer Observatory:
Front Range Community College, Fort Collins, Colorado. Website.
WE
WA
NT
TO
PRESIDENT
HE
AR
Trevor Moriarty: pres at NoCoAstro dot org F R
OM
YO
VICE PRESIDENT
U!
Bob Michael: vp at NoCoAstro dot org
TREASURER & OUTREACH
Greg Halac: treas at NoCoAstro dot org
SECRETARY
Dave Karp: sec at NoCoAstro dot org
NEWSLETTER EDITOR
Januar y
Amanda Bell: ObjView at NoCoAstro dot org
WEBSITE
Robert Arn: web-edit at NoCoAstro dot org
NoCoAstro
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DO YOU KNOW MORE COOL SOL AR FACTS?
Share them on our FaceBook page!
Join other astro-nerds for fun conversation & more astro-news.
www.FaceBook.com/NoCoAstro
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January
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