New pictures of the sun

[ivylass]

From a Japanese satellite

Most excellent quotes:

“Everything we thought we knew about X-ray images of the Sun is now out of date,” says Leon Golub from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts,

“Almost every day, we look at the data and we say – what the heck was that?” says Golub.

Video of “swaying spikes” in the chromosphere, previously thought to be a calm area of the sun.

I have goosebumps.

[Beadalin]

That’s beautiful – it’s like watching a fire on a really, really large scale. I wish the article gave some more background on what was previously believed about the chromosphere. I can do my own research of course, but I am a lazy American and prefer to have these things spoon-fed to me.

[Astroboy14]

That is too freaking cool!

[Encinitas]

I love this quote:

“These structures are 8000 kilometres long and some extend twice that high,” says SOT science team member Alan Title from Lockheed Martin Advance Technology Center in Palo Alto, California, US. “Their speed is such that if you sat on the end of one, which I don’t recommend, you could travel from Washington, DC, to San Francisco in about four minutes. These things are really moving.”

(emphasis added)

[ivylass]

Sounds like to me they’re already investigating Travel by Chromosphere Spike.

[CynicalGabe]

Shiny!!

[ivylass]

Another article

“For the first time, we are now able to make out tiny granules of hot gas that rise and fall in the sun’s magnified atmosphere,” said Dick Fisher, director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division

WHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

[Phlosphr]

Cool.

I mean not cool but…Nice!

Very nice!