MessageToEagle.com - Are you curious about the Sun? You now have an excellent chance to learn everything you ever wanted, and even more about our Sun and all its mysteries.
Five new videos called "Mysteries of the Sun" have been just released by NASA.
The videos describe the science of the sun and its effects on the solar system and Earth.
Scientists study the sun not only to better understand the orb that influences life, but also to study how it sends solar
material out into space, filling up the bubble that defines the farthest reaches of the solar system.
The sun can also impact Earth's technology: solar storms can affect our communications satellites and cause surges
in power lines.
These movies cover the breadth of solar, heliospheric, and geospace science, a field known as heliophysics.
With beautiful graphics and well-explained narration, the series has won awards even before its public release, including
the 2011 Platinum 3rd Annual Pixie Award in the category of Motion Graphics, receiving compliments from the judges such
as "breath-taking animation" and "Some of the best in the competition."
"NASA constantly creates science products to reach out to the public," said Ruth Netting, Manager, Communications and
Public Engagement for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington.
"Informing the public is not the only reason -- we also want to get people involved in science."
The five movies, available online at http://missionscience.nasa.gov/sun
and on DVD, cover five areas of heliophysics:
Space Weather, Solar Variability, the Heliosphere, Earth's magnetosphere, and Earth's upper atmosphere.
Click on image to enlarge
Anatomy of the Sun -- one of the illustrations from the Mysteries of the Sun book. Credit: NASA/Jenny Mottar
The five videos are:
Space Weather
This video describes the direct and dramatic effects that eruptions on the sun can cause at Earth. Earth's magnetic
fields change shape and strength in response to an eruption on the sun, and these changes in turn can damage space born
technology and disrupt communications traveling through space. They also cause aurora.
Solar Variability
Rotations of the material deep inside the sun cause constantly shifting magnetic field lines. This variability drives
the solar cycle, during which the north and south magnetic poles reverse position approximately every 11 years.
The Heliosphere
The solar wind streams out from the sun until it collides with material from the rest of space. This entire bubble defined
by the solar wind is called the heliosphere and scientists study the very boundaries to better understand our place in space.
Earth's Magnetosphere
Earth is enveloped in a protective magnetic envelope called the magnetosphere. This can change shape in response to the
sun's effects, causing various types of space weather at Earth.
Earth's Upper Atmosphere
Certain layers, high up in the atmosphere also respond to incoming energy from the sun. These layers contain charged particles
and so naturally respond to an influx of magnetic energy. Understanding such variability is crucial since it can, in turn, degrade
radio communication as well as satellite orbits.
In addition to the movies, there is a guidebook with full-color images, diagrams, and charts that will make the science of
heliophysics clear for all readers. The topics covered include the anatomy of the Sun, the solar cycle, solar storms, and solar
variability, as well as the Sun’s effects on space weather and the Earth’s magnetosphere and upper atmosphere.
One of the ways the Sun visibly influences events on Earth is the Aurora. The guide also provides an explanation of the connection
between this phenomena and the Sun.
Additional awards are as follows:
Telly Award: 2012 Silver Award (highest honor): Non-Broadcast Productions - Use of Animation
Telly Award: 2012 Bronze Award: Non-Broadcast Productions – Education
For Space Weather video:
2010 Gold 17th Annual Award of Excellence Communicator Award: Education
2010 Silver 17th Annual Award of Distinction Communicator Award: Use of Animation
2011 Silver TIVA-DC Peer Award for the category: Motion Graphics: 2D/3D Animation Over $25,000
2011 Bronze 32nd Annual Telly Award Film/Video: Education
For Solar Variability video:
2010 Gold 17th Annual Award of Excellence Communicator Award: Education
2010 Silver 17th Annual Award of Distinction Communicator Award Use of Animation
2011 Silver TIVA-DC Peer Award for the category: Motion Graphics: 2D/3D Animation Over $25,000
2011 Bronze 32nd Annual Telly Award Film/Video: Use of Animation
For Heliosphere video:
2011 Bronze TIVA-DC Peer Award for the category: Motion Graphics: 2D/3D Animation Over $25,000
Follow MessageToEagle.com for the latest news on Facebook
and Twitter !
Recommend this article:
Solar Tornadoes As Wide As Five Earths Discovered
Solar tornadoes several times as wide as the Earth can be generated in the solar atmosphere, say researchers in the UK.
"This is perhaps the first time that such a huge solar tornado is filmed by an imager. Previously much smaller solar tornadoes were found my
SOHO satellite. But they were not filmed," says Dr. Xing Li, of Aberystwyth University.
Something New Spotted On The Sun
One day in the fall of 2011, Neil Sheeley, a solar scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., did what he always does –
look through the daily images of the sun from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).
But on this day he saw something he'd never noticed before: a pattern of cells with bright centers and dark boundaries occurring in the sun's atmosphere, the corona...
April night sky offers many hours of delight for all stargazers.
Surely you don't want to miss the oldest known meteor shower, or the best Saturn has to offer...
Lets take a look at some stargazing highlights this month...
Read more:
Hot Flow Anomalies Are Amazing Phenomenon On Venus
Hot flow anomalies release so much energy that the solar wind is deflected, and can even move back toward the Sun.
That’s a lot of energy when you consider that the solar wind is supersonic, traveling faster than the speed of sound and the HFA is strong enough
to make it turn around.
As the solar wind flows around Venus, it creates similar space weather effects as it does near Earth, but rememeber that Venus has no protective
magnetic field, so the explosion happens right above the surface of the planet!
New Kepler Explorer:
View The 1,790 Distant Planetary Systems - For Free!
Armchair explorers of the cosmos can now have at their fingertips the nearly 2,000 distant planetary systems discovered by NASA's Kepler Mission.
Now available for free from the iTunes App Store, Kepler Explorer was developed through the OpenLab initiative at UC Santa Cruz,
which brought together faculty and students in astrophysics, art, and technology for a summer institute last year.
Bright Star In The Constellation Lyra Is Cooler Than The Human Body
The coldest class of stars have temperatures as cool as the human body.
Astronomers hunted these dark orbs, termed Y dwarfs, for more than a decade without success.
When viewed with a visible-light telescope, they are nearly impossible to see.
The Wandering Stars
In ancient civilizations, people pondered the meanings of the stars, watching for clues to their survival: the beginning of planting and
harvesting times, the seasons, and even portents of danger.
They soon noticed that certain stars didn't stay in place, but wandered amongst the fixed star field.
Astronomical Mystery: Giant Alien Planet Orbiting Three Suns
Binary stars are well-known and even trinary systems may be common but most of them
are crowded together and thus, difficult to find and study. Additionally, it has long been considered they are inhospitable to planets...
Radio Emission From Ultracool Dwarf Detected By Arecibo Telescope
The Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico has discovered sporadic bursts of polarized radio emission from the T6.5 brown J1047+21.
Because Arecibo is a single, fixed-dish telescope, it has a restricted practical sensitivity to weak, quiescent emission from radio sources...
Invader From Another Galaxy
This alien intruder from another galaxy is in many ways different from other exoplanets observed by astronomers.
Located about 2000 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Fornax (the Furnace), the Jupiter-like planet orbits a dying star of
extragalactic origin and risks to be engulfed by it.
"Pillars Of Creation" Are Gone
Every time you look at the beautiful and famous image of the Pillars of Creation taken by Hubble back in 1995,
you are actually admiring something that no longer exists.
In fact, the Pillars of Creation were already long gone by the time the image was captured!
MessageToEagle.com - Are you curious about the Sun? You now have an excellent chance to learn everything you ever wanted, and even more about our Sun and all its mysteries.
One day in the fall of 2011, Neil Sheeley, a solar scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., did what he always does –
look through the daily images of the sun from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).
But on this day he saw something he'd never noticed before: a pattern of cells with bright centers and dark boundaries occurring in the sun's atmosphere, the corona...
Hot flow anomalies release so much energy that the solar wind is deflected, and can even move back toward the Sun.
That’s a lot of energy when you consider that the solar wind is supersonic, traveling faster than the speed of sound and the HFA is strong enough
to make it turn around.
As the solar wind flows around Venus, it creates similar space weather effects as it does near Earth, but rememeber that Venus has no protective
magnetic field, so the explosion happens right above the surface of the planet!
Armchair explorers of the cosmos can now have at their fingertips the nearly 2,000 distant planetary systems discovered by NASA's Kepler Mission.
Now available for free from the iTunes App Store, Kepler Explorer was developed through the OpenLab initiative at UC Santa Cruz,
which brought together faculty and students in astrophysics, art, and technology for a summer institute last year.
The coldest class of stars have temperatures as cool as the human body.
Astronomers hunted these dark orbs, termed Y dwarfs, for more than a decade without success.
When viewed with a visible-light telescope, they are nearly impossible to see.
In ancient civilizations, people pondered the meanings of the stars, watching for clues to their survival: the beginning of planting and
harvesting times, the seasons, and even portents of danger.
They soon noticed that certain stars didn't stay in place, but wandered amongst the fixed star field.
The Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico has discovered sporadic bursts of polarized radio emission from the T6.5 brown J1047+21.
This alien intruder from another galaxy is in many ways different from other exoplanets observed by astronomers.
Every time you look at the beautiful and famous image of the Pillars of Creation taken by Hubble back in 1995,
you are actually admiring something that no longer exists.