Sunday, July 22, 2012

Highest Ever Resolution Photos of the SUN Captured

NASA has captured the highest ever resolution photos of the star that gives the fuel to run our planet, the Sun. The high-resolution photos of the sun’s corona have been captured by the telescope aboard the NASA rocket that was launched on July 11. This has been indicated in a NASA report titled, “NASA Telescope Captures Sharpest Images of Sun’s Corona.”
 
 Credit: NASA

The images were obtained during a brief 620-second long flight which took the rocket into the skies over the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

Leon Golub of Harvard-Smith Center for Astrophysics says,
"Even though this mission was only a few minutes long, it marks a big breakthrough in coronal studies."

What is the corona?

The corona of the sun is the hot region of gas surrounding the surface of the sun. Astrophysicists want to learn more about the corona so that the functioning of our star, the ultimate nuclear fusion reactor could be understood a bit more in detail.

How were the photos taken?

The photos for this mission were taken using the Hi-C telescope, that’s able to take pictures of structures as small as 135 miles across.

The Hi-C telescope was developed by the cooperation between researchers at University of Alabama, the Smithsonian Astrophysics Observatory, Lockheed’s Solar Astrophysics Laboratory, University of Central Lancashire and the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Hi-C stands for High Resolution Coronal Imager.

You can watch video of New Solar Flare! The sun isn't done yet, not by a long shot Link

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