SJ-Astronomy Solar Astronomy, 2 Aug 2020

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From YouTube: Streaming Solar Sunday

Description

At 1:30 PDT, join us as we look in real time for prominences (often thought of as solar flares) and intricate texture within the Sun’s chromosphere (its atmosphere). We'll also cover some of the science of how we view the Sun and how the Sun itself works.

At 3:00 PDT, tune in for the latest real-time views and for discussion about news items or more in-depth science discussions related to solar astronomy.

A

Hello good afternoon, my name is wolf and we are here with the san jose astronomical association for streaming solar sunday. Thank you for tuning in so yeah welcome to streaming solar sunday. This is the fourth online solar astronomy event that we're doing you know, as we are all stuck at home due to the coronavirus crisis. So I'm hoping this is something to uh you know, add some entertainment to your sunday.

A

We did change the format a little bit from the prior ones that we've done uh the first half that's starting now from 1 30 to 3 o'clock. We've titled here spots, prominences filaments and more.

A

If you visited this event before in the prior months, this will be more or less the same thing right, so we will go through all the basics of you know these solar features, but then for folks who have listened to this part before and really are just interested in the latest views of the month and some news topics: we've added another segment that will start at three o'clock and run through 3 30, and there we'll do topics and views of the month so uh yeah.

A

So a little bit different today with some new stuff towards the end, so I hope you will all hang around for that and yeah in general. Please do give us your feedback via youtube chat before you leave. It does help us make this better. You know we are trying to do the best we can for you and we're learning how to do this, so we really benefit from your feedback about.

A

You know what works for you and maybe what you'd like to see differently in the future, so yeah, think of us before you log out and give us some feedback all right and a quick tip for you. uh You know we're talking about astronomy, astronomy is about outer space outer space is dark and you may benefit from turning on youtube's dark theme, for some of the images that we will show and if you want to try that you can click on whatever your little avatar icon is at the top right of the your youtube window.

A

If you click on that you'll pull down this menu, there's the dark theme option in the middle. If you click that a new menu will pop up with a little slider button on the bottom, and if you click on that one, that should switch you to dark mode so give that a try. If you like it's entirely optional.

A

Okay here is the outline for today the first half of the talk so we'll do an introduction. We'll talk about how to view the sun safely, we'll talk about the sun's place in our solar system and how we view the sun in different light, specifically we'll talk about something called h.

A

Alpha astronomy, then we'll discuss the structure of the sun, show some pretty cool, sights and describe the solar cycle, and as we go through all this we'll do some visits to the backyard where I have a telescope set up for you guys and we'll also have some q a opportunities in between, let's quickly introduce the hosts for today.

A

So we have nancy nancy. You could say hello, all right, nancy's waving! Thank you. uh We have lyfika who's joined us this week. All the way from austin texas liprega used to work with us uh here in san jose before she moved, but now because of the internet, hey texas is just next door. So we're happy to have her back joining us for solar sunday. Today, then we have emery online cool and then there's rashi.

A

Who is the master of fruit? You will find out what that means later, as we go through the presentation and then of course you guys are stuck with me so, like I said, my name is wolf. So all right, okay, so now we may also meet uh zipper the cat. He shares the house with me and he lets me do stuff every now and then, but he will also insist on making announcements at random times during the day.

A

So if you hear a cat meowing that will be zipper and he is just part of the show. I would like this to be interactive as much as possible. I realize that's difficult over. You know youtube chat, but let's try so please do ask questions in youtube chat as we go along.

A

We will have folks watching this and maybe respond in the chat or hold the question for for a joint discussion later and we'll also have some questions for you where you can participate. So please do that. A quick word about the san jose astronomical association in general. Before we jump into the detailed content, we are an educational organization and a non-profit. We offer a whole bunch of public programs, public, star parties, nighttime and solar events like this one.

A

We have school star parties where we go out to schools and you know, do nighttime astronomy with the students there. We have public talks and equipment help. So if you have a telescope somewhere in the back of your closet, if you haven't used in a decade, you know we can help you get that going again.

A

We also have swap meet events where you can either sell or acquire some nice equipment for folks who have chosen to become members official members of sja which, by the way, is only 20 bucks a year, I always say hey, you know it's like a price of a pizza, so come on. It's not that much. So if you choose to buy that pizza equivalent, you get to access our imaging workshops. We have training for folks who would like to get started in astronomy. We have a nice program where you can borrow equipment.

A

We have a library and we also offer private observing sessions now. But of course, because we're all you know stuck with the coronavirus restrictions, a bunch of these in-person events, we cannot hold right now, so we're not doing outside public star parties, but we are trying to bring these things to you. You know through medium, like this, like we're doing today here via youtube um and yeah.

A

If you want to find out more, uh please check us out at sj.net or the meetup group, which is probably how you got here in the first place and normally yeah. We are located in san jose in a place called hoagie park. That's our normal base of operations. You know when things are normal and we'll get back there, I'm sure, okay, so yeah speaking of hokie park, our normal base of operations, so that is normally where we would hold this event.

A

And- and these are some a couple of pictures of past events- you can see there's some tennis courts here. You know some grass and a nice sidewalk, so we usually set up our telescopes here on the sidewalk and yeah. There's a bunch of solar scopes set up that people come by and look through, and then we end up having discussions about whatever interests, the visitors.

A

Now, of course, we can't do it quite this way today right because yep instead we're sitting here at our computers, but I still want to quickly visit uh hoagie park with you whoops I jumped ahead there. Let me instead click on the button that I wanted to click on, and that will be this one.

A

So here I am showing um hokie park through a planetarium application called stellarium, which is an open source software that you can download yourself if you like. Usually we use this for nighttime astronomy, but I can kind of show you what it would look like if we were in hoagie park again. Here is the tennis court right that you saw earlier and if we look up into the sky, hey there's the sun. So if we were on the sidewalk that would be burning onto our heads right now make us sweat and probably give me sunburn.

A

So you know the good news is right. Now we don't have to be quite that exposed to the bright sun, but this is what we would see now, because this is a virtual hokie park, there's a trick we can employ here. That is something cool that we cannot do when we're physically in hokie park, and that is, I can turn off the atmosphere.

A

So this is what the sky would look like. If earth didn't have atmosphere, sure we couldn't breathe, but let's ignore that for the moment right. Instead, we can kind of marvel at what the sky would look like right. The atmosphere is what scatters the light from the sun. You know that's what creates the blue glow. So if we take the atmosphere away, that blue glow also disappears and then yeah, you can actually see uh you know night otherwise, nighttime objects. So, for example, you can tell that yeah right here.

A

You know mercury is pretty close to the sun and, let's see and venus is over here uh as well- and here is uh the orion constellation uh beetlejuice a very prominent star. These things are usually visible in the winter sky. That's when this is uh visible to us in the night, uh but right now yeah it's up there in the daytime, which is why we don't think of it as part of the nighttime sky, but yeah, here's orion's belt, so yeah this is pretty cool. So we can see.

A

You know what the sky looks like if we were to turn off the atmosphere. So this is something you know we could not do in real life in holy park. So all right, but you know we are not in hokie park. Instead, we are here and we're using my backyard as a base of operations for today, and this is where um yeah. So this is where we have a telescope set up for you today, so you can see it right here, yep, you can see the leaves blowing in the wind.

A

So this is a live view of the setup that is in my backyard, and we will visit that again in a little bit and I'll try to show you. You know what the view through the telescope looks like today.

A

Before we do that, though, I want to make sure we're really clear about how we look at the sun with proper protection right. Do not look at the sun without proper eye protection. That is really important. So when we do solar astronomy, we don't just take a telescope. Like you see here on the left, this is the kind of telescope you would use for nighttime work, the opening over here on the left side. That is what we call the aperture.

A

That's where the light enters, then the light bounces around this tube a little bit and ultimately comes out the back, and that's where you would put your your eyeball right to see the image through the scope and we do basically the same thing for solar astronomy except that yeah. You know the sunlight would burn your eyeball to a crisp if we did not employ some protection and that protection comes in the form of a solar filter.

A

That looks something like this, so it's a plate or a disk that gets stuck to the front of the telescope, and this filter blocks out 99.999 percent of the light making it safe to look through the scope. Here's the same kind of thing again, another telescope with this kind of filter attached to the front, and you may wonder: hey, look it's wrinkled and yeah. Sometimes these filters are made out of just mylar films, they're, actually very thin. They almost look too flimsy to do the job, but they actually work quite well.

A

Glass filters are also available as an alternative. They just offer different trade-offs, but.

B

A

Is the kind of equipment that you might see you know out in hokie park on the sidewalk? If you were to come visit, these kind of filters are available also, okay, one second yep rashi, wanted to add something. What you got rashi.

C

Yeah, sorry about that, I know you're just getting to it right now, but just be mindful that when you're using these filters that you're now putting the filters on the back end.

C

Let's go for between your eyes and the binoculars, because that that light will still destroy the filters, melt the filters and still hurt your eyes. So they need to be at on the primary lenses uh in front of the the telescope or the binoculars.

A

Correct yeah and I'm sorry, I think I I accidentally hit the wrong button. While rashi was talking, so you may missed a sentence or two so rasheed was saying that yeah, you know notice that in these pictures the filters are on the front of the telescope. You know not on the back. um There are different solutions here, I'm not showing all the possibilities but yeah. Most of the solutions do put the filter on the front and that's exactly where it needs to be so yeah thanks. Thanks for watching.

A

Okay, all right yeah. These kinds of filters are available also for binoculars. So here you can see the same kind of thing bolted to binoculars, so that can be kind of a cool way to look at the sun and then, of course, you may have seen these kinds of uh solar glasses. These were all over the place during 2017 when the solar eclipse was happening and we'll need them again in 2024 when there'll be another solar, eclipse, so yeah.

A

So in this picture you can see a whole bunch of students looking at the sun and they all have their glasses on. Except for this girl who smartly is not looking at the sun, because I guess she forgot her glasses. So, yes, please always use proper eye protection. When you look at the sun, it's very important because you will be blinded if you don't do so.

A

Okay, so now, with that safety announcement out of the way, let's talk about the sun in its place in the solar system, so this is kind of a cool picture. Here's the sun in the middle, it's really big, and then you can see representations of the planetary orbits around it. So here's mercury, venus, here's the earth with our moon and then mars. Then there is the asteroid belt here and then the other big planets jupiter saturn, uh uranus and uh neptune and yeah.

A

So this is a really nice picture, but in in some ways this picture is completely wrong because it does not accurately represent the scale of our solar system and scale is actually really hard to show. This next picture attempts to show the scale but you'll notice that the slide is mostly black, because space is mostly empty. There's just lots of nothing in between things. So you can see a sliver over here on the left that is the sun. Then you can see a few tiny dots over here.

A

These tiny dots are the inner planets and I think mercury is so small that you don't even see it, but the earth would be uh sorry. The earth would be here and then this guy here is mars. Here's the asteroid belt. Then you can see the other planets again pretty spread out right notice, how close to the sun. uh You know the inner planets. Are, you know up to mars, including the earth and then how spread out things get after that so yeah.

A

So this gives you a little better idea of how things are really arranged in the solar system and the spacings of our major solar system objects.

A

Okay, now, let's ask a question: how do we see stuff? How do we see anything and, of course the answer is light right right now, you're looking at a computer screen, and you can see it because there are light emitters in your display. You know that are going through some color filters and that ultimately allows the monitor to present a color image to your eyes. If you look out the window right, you can see trees, maybe because the sun is emitting light and that light is bouncing off the trees and then going to your eyes.

A

So yeah light allows us to see, but let's think about that light a little bit more. So here's a couple pictures of rainbows. You know I took these pictures, I don't know over the course of the last year or two because I like rainbows, I just think they're really cool and I'm sure you've all seen them right and rainbows are natural phenomena that split uh the white light from the sun into its color components, and you know you've probably also seen the same effect when you take a prism right.

A

You run white light, a beam of white light through a prism. The prism will split that white light into the rainbow. It's the same basic effect as you get with a rainbow in the sky.

A

Now, if we get a little more sciency about this, you know it looks something like this. So really light is just a tiny portion of this whole thing that we call the electromagnetic spectrum. There are lots of types of radiation and radiation often sounds like a scary word, but actually it shouldn't really be. um Yes, there are scary parts of radiation, but on the whole, we're bathed in radiation all the time, and it's perfectly fine and in fact we rely on it for lots and lots of things.

A

uh You know sunlight or or visible light is a type of radiation that our eyes can detect right. So we have evolved detectors for this really narrow range of the entire electromagnetic radiation spectrum. But then we've built instruments to see other parts. For example down here you can see, am and fm radio and yeah. You know you may have detectors for this in your house. You may have a radio you can turn on and you you can sense. You know the radiation that comes in these forms: microwave yep that happens in your microwave oven.

A

Also, your wi-fi router is doing its thing somewhere in this range right. It's also type of a radio and then yeah. We got the infrared light here. Infrared light is what you feel is heat. So if you hold your hand up to the to the sky outside and your palm feels warm, it's because yeah your hand is sensing. The infrared radiation coming to you from the sun, then here's the stuff that we can see ultraviolet light is the part that gives us sunburn, especially me.

A

I need to be careful outside, and so should you and then x-rays are familiar. Of course you know from the doctor's office and then there's something called gamma rays out here that are very energetic and these things are pretty dangerous, but uh luckily we don't really have to deal with these on a regular basis. They may come from outer space, but uh it's infrequent and for the most part our atmosphere can help us shield out these things that are dangerous to us so but yeah.

A

This is the entire electromagnetic spectrum and our eyeballs can only detect this little sliver right here.

A

Okay, armed with that information, let's look at this poster, so this is something that we usually have out in the park and we use this as a discussion starter. So I want to use it here today as well. Now, there's a lot going on here, so we'll kind of step through this one by one. First, let's look at this thing here on the left side, you see this yellow image of the sun and it's labeled photosphere. The photosphere is the term we use for the surface of the sun.

A

Now the sun does not have a hard surface like the earth, but but there is effectively something like a surface, so the photosphere is it, and this is essentially the part that that emits all the light that that we see and uh the photosphere may have features called sunspots. We'll talk about this a little bit more as we go through the rest of the presentation, but you can see some little examples of it here in this picture.

A

If we move away from the sun a little bit, we leave the photosphere and we will enter a region called the chromosphere and in this region we find features called prominences and filaments in something called the h alpha view and we'll describe more what that is so we're going to be talking about this a whole bunch more today, and you can see that this view has some different structures in it. You know it provides some different details. It shows different features than the prior photosphere view, and the similar thing happens.

A

If we move over here to the inner corona again, we've taken another step away from the sun. You know moving farther out into essentially the sun's atmosphere and there again you can see slightly different features. Now. This is not a view that we can get here from the ground because, like I said earlier, our atmosphere will actually shield out some of the higher frequency radiation. So this ultraviolet light that is emitted by the inner corona. We cannot see from the surface of the earth. We have to send the spacecraft out beyond our atmosphere.

A

The final picture here is showing the outer corona and the outer corona is this stuff that extends way out here from the sun. You can see it going out in all directions. The outer corona is generally only visible during a total solar eclipse, so the picture that's shown here is kind of a cheat actually right. This, the the corona picture, was taken during an eclipse and then an image of the sun was again superimposed on top of it.

A

So you can kind of see what the sun looks like in context, but you would never actually see this combination in reality, you can only see the corona if the sun is obscured by the moon during an eclipse but yeah so yeah the corona extends out very very far right. It's and it's a pretty amazing structure and it's beautiful to see during a solar eclipse.

A

Okay, on this slide, it's just another example of what we talked about a moment ago. I mentioned that yeah. Depending on what light we use to look at the sun. We see different features, and so I don't really want to talk about all these in detail, but it's just to illustrate that yeah, that's kind of how science is done. You know we use different instruments that allow us to see the sun in light. Our eyes cannot detect and yeah.

A

That reveals different uh details allows us to study different aspects of the sun, so each one of these is a different slice of the electromagnetic spectrum, a different type of radiation, and they all provide some different information. That's important for studying the sun, all right, and so at this point let's take a short break and see if any questions popped up so far,.

C

No, we don't have any questions at all in the feed.

A

Oh wow, okay, maybe people are making it too easy on us, but okay, we'll go along with that for the moment, uh but maybe we can ask a question to our audience right and so yeah. You know you see this cool picture of this game. Wheel and hey. Look. Nancy has one just like it's sitting next to her, so she's going to give this a spin, and this is going to give us a question that I would like you to help us answer so nancy. You want to give it a whirl.

D

E

Thank you. Thank you for the presentation today. So.

C

D

C

All going to win a million dollars right.

D

That's right and a new car, let's.

E

Do a couple questions: okay, first, one.

D

Okay, we have bb category, let's see, what's the b question.

E

Okay, um all right, so what particles does the sun produce that are passing through your body right now,.

A

Oh, that's a cool question. I love this question all right. Okay, pretty.

E

Cool question huh I'll do one more questions, let you think about it and once you have the answer, please, post and here comes second question.

D

I you see with I okay, okay,.

E

So for the I category yup, I got that um the parts of the sun above the photosphere are collectively known as what.

A

E

A

That one should be an easy one if you guys were paying attention. Okay, so I.

E

Know I think you just say something like that, something that.

A

Exactly so, let me this is a good quest question to see if our audience is awake,.

D

E

Okay, so the first question: what particles does the sun produce that are passing through your body right now? Second question: the parts of the sun above the photosphere are collectively known as what.

A

A

Okay, we need some music like from jack ready. It's like.

D

A

Are we getting any takers for this one, at least for the second one, come on guys.

C

A

Not yet easy, I am disappointed, you know uh you guys are all fired, but that's fine, okay, we'll move on and uh we'll we'll give the answers away. I guess right so! Oh, oh.

C

A

Oh, are we getting something, oh.

C

Yeah we've got marianne.

B

D

Ding ding ding, ding ding, all.

C

Right q1 rushing on your trooners.

E

That's absolutely right.

A

E

A

Are some really cool particles, and maybe we should have a separate talk just about neutrinos someday right, but this is something it's probably a particle that most of most folks have never heard of right. You may have heard of yeah, you know atoms have of protons and neutrons and electrons, and that's all good, but there are additional particles that are zipping around out there, and one type is a neutrino and the sun actually emits a whole bunch of neutrinos.

A

They are, they are uh almost massless, uh they are no charge, so they don't really interact with much and they just flow mostly through everything that they encounter, including your body. So I always forget these numbers, but I think the number is like about a trillion. Neutrinos per second are passing through your body right now and you're, not feeling any of them. So I find that kind of an amazing little fact.

A

E

Yeah, it's roughly 100 trillion 100.

A

Trillion see I'm bad with numbers, so thanks for fixing that up for me.

C

I wonder how many of those pass through us at night.

A

Oh, that's a good question. I think the answer is probably about the same right, because they will also pass mostly through the earth. um They actually are neutrino detectors that we've built and they they are built like deep underground.

A

um I think the way these are done is it's like giant pools of water, deep underground, deep underground to shield from other types of radiation, and then every now and then a neutrino will bump into something- and you know generate some other type of radiation that we can detect, but most neutrinos will just zip right through the earth. Some get you know interact with something because the earth is pretty big, but yeah most will actually just go right through too. I think.

C

Awesome and steve just gave the answer for the second question on uh the chat chromosphere.

A

Awesome, thank you. Okay, you guys are rehired thanks. I appreciate that.

A

Yes, all right, okay, moving on, let's see so um yeah okay, so we talked about the you know light a moment ago right so here's a picture of the sun up in the sky probably looks a lot like that right now, if you were to look up- and uh you know- we said the sun is what gives you the view of the photosphere right- the photosphere is essentially the part of the sun that emits the light and if we just wear proper protection or put filters on our telescopes, we can then see images like this, but the chromosphere view requires that we go back to the sciency stuff here and we think about what's happening in the electromagnetic spectrum.

A

So let's talk about that for a moment here, so we all know that the moon is made of cheese. This is common knowledge right, so that's pretty clear, but then what is the sun made of right and it turns out the sun is made out of one of these things on the periodic table and you've probably all seen this at one point. You know maybe back in high school, who knows but yeah.

A

So there is this thing up here: hydrogen right, that's the simplest element on the periodic table and the sun is mostly that, and so the sun is hot hydrogen right. So hydrogen is very energized up there and uh you know it's it's forced to glow and let's see so how does hydrogen actually glow?

A

And if we go back to the original full rainbow down here and then ask how hydrogen glows it turns out hydrogen glows in some very specific colors hydrogen will glow in this purplish color. Here that's at a wavelength of 410 nanometers. It will also produce this blue color at 434, and then this one at 486 nanometers and then this thing we call hydrogen alpha light.

A

So remember we talked about hydrogen alpha briefly before so there's this thing called hydrogen alpha light at 656, nanometer, wavelength in the red and so yeah, so hot hydrogen gas emits just these four colors in in these very precise positions um within the visible range now outside the visible range, actually lots of other contributions that hydrogen makes, but within the part that we can see with our own eyes, we get those and the one that we're most interested in for today is this. Hydrogen alpha line just for comparison here are similar.

A

What we call spectra, spectral lines for other elements, so helium has this other pattern of bright lines and oxygen and carbon and each element on the product table has a very unique pattern which results in some really cool signs that we could do, because we can look out into distance space. Look at the light that we see from something, and we can tell what it's made of by analyzing this this barcode. Essentially it's a lot like a barcode at the supermarket. You scan it and boop.

A

You know what kind of stuff is at the other end, but again today, we're mostly looking at hydrogen and work. We care mostly about this hydrogen alpha line over here, so we have special solar telescopes that include precision filters that specifically isolate this hydrogen alpha light right, the one that we mentioned before and an example is this telescope right here. This was made by a company called lund and it's called an ls100, because the opening here is a hundred millimeter aperture. So the light enters here goes to the telescope.

A

Shoots out the other end, but along the light path is actually a different kind of filter than what I showed at the beginning. So here you know, you know that these funny cylinders sticking out if you're curious. What those are you can ask in the chat, but the the short version of the story is that these filters are. These cylinders are part of the filter mechanism that is built into the telescope, so light enters fancy equipment inside isolates the hydrogen alpha spectral line, and then we can look just at that. Color.

A

uh Here's a smaller version of this just as a point of interest right. This is the same type of idea. Again, it's got one of these funny cylinders and there's a built-in filter. This is a 50 millimeter version, so it has a smaller aperture over here, and the cool thing is that if you are an sga member, you can actually borrow one of these through the loaner program and here's that loaner kit so hey. This is pretty cool. It's an incentive to join sj.

A

If you want to try your own hydrogen alpha solar astronomy at home as a second option, there are also hydrogen alpha. Telescopes from a company called coronado at the top is something called the personal, solar, telescope or pst. This is probably the least expensive telescope of this kind. You can buy, but here's a little bigger one on the bottom, and it actually turns out that very soon sga will offer a pst also in the loaner program. So one of these is coming so that will be fun, but then yeah today again we're using a lunch.

A

100, that's sitting in my backyard. uh It's something called double stacked has to do with the filters if you're curious ask in the chat, but then yeah we're not there to put our eyes on the eyepiece today right because you're all sitting at your computer. So how do we get the image to you over the computer and we do that with the camera so, instead of the eyepiece, we have. Actually this kind of a camera stuck in there and you can kind of see in here- is the sensor.

A

So the camera sensor is yeah, it's kind of tucked away in there, um and so earlier we saw this view from the poster. This was this chromosphere review that was taken in h, alpha light by nasa and then just as a comparison down here is a picture I took in 2017 with the type of setup that I was just describing with those telescopes from the prior slides, and uh you know it doesn't look quite as fancy, because this was a really quick snapshot, but yeah. You can definitely see there's some stuff going on here.

A

You know and so prepared. With that background information, let's go back and visit my backyard. One more time here, let me so here's our telescope. Let me find my window.

C

A

So now we don't really want to look at the telescope anymore. Instead, we want to look here.

A

haha So this is a live view through the telescope, with the kind of camera that I showed a moment ago, and we will have our crew join us as well, so they can add information if they like so yeah, and you can see this is what's going on right now, um you can you may notice that the image is jiggling a little bit and that's because of atmospheric disturbance, so there's heat rising from the ground that actually causes the air to be unstable and, as a result, the image is dancing a little bit.

A

It's just something that we have to put up with when we do this kind of work. um Oh.

C

My gosh wolf.

A

C

That that looks like uh this, this orange that I have here.

A

B

A

The orange is exactly.

C

Like what you're, seeing on the on the scope, there.

A

Exactly yeah so often actually yeah, we described the sun's uh chromosphere texture kind of orange-like and you can see it right. This is not smooth in here there. They are kind of light and dark dimply things I guess right, and that is that is real texture again it may appear a little wavy or or kind of jumpy because of the atmospheric disturbance, but nevertheless this this is real structure within the chromosphere and we can play with the camera controls a little bit. You know to to perhaps change what detail and what features we see notice.

A

There is something here that looks like a scratch or a scar. These things are called filaments and we'll describe more what that is in a moment, but so this is an interesting feature here. uh Here's another one of those things right there and uh hey, look, there's a little thing, sticking actually out from the sun, so we call that a province, that's a tiny one, but hey there's something going on over here. Let's, let's see if we can uh zoom in on that a little bit. So let me go.

C

You're absolutely right, uh mr orange is making a visit from the from the orchard right now.

A

Oh there you go. That's uh I find that amusing and also quite uh slightly unsettling. So uh thanks, mr orange.

A

So, let's see yeah, so if we uh so I'm moving a telescope right now, uh with with these remote controls and yeah check this out right so down here, there's something erupting from the edge of the sun. You're gonna see this poof right. That's sticking out now! This may not look all that big, but keep in mind that the earth is actually pretty small compared to the sun. We could fit a hundred and nine earths across the entire sun diameter, so the earth is smaller than this.

A

This poof that you see here right and this proof is hydrogen gas- hydrogen plasma erupting from the outer layer of the sun, driven by a strong magnetic fields and we'll talk about that, a bunch more as we go through the rest of the day, but but yeah. So it seems like today we actually have some interesting features to share, which is nice.

A

Okay, let me go back into the presentation material that will tell you a little more about what we're seeing and then we will revisit this live image again.

A

Okay, actually.

B

A

We do that. That's right, let's take a quick break for questions one more time right, just in case some questions popped up in the context of you know the hydrogen alpha telescopes or anything like that.

A

And our audience seems to be making it too easy on us.

A

And rashi already gave away uh what kind of cheese the moon is made of. Okay, so that's not going to be a question.

C

Yep sorry, swiss cheese.

A

All right should we give the wheel another spin. Then let's see if we're not getting any.

D

Questions then we.

A

Can make some questions.

D

That's right we'll go we're going to ask you some questions. I'm.

C

Rooting for a test tesla this time, so I'm rooting for a tesla go for it. Oh.

A

Before tesla, okay,.

D

Okay, we have j coming up all right.

E

So, okay, what would become of the sun when it runs out few and dies.

D

Question number one.

B

Okay, one more question.

D

E

And is h: how does the sun produce energy? I like this question.

A

Okay, that's a good question too yeah. The wheel would have been better if the wheel had come up with these questions in the other order, but that's okay, the wheel does what it wants.

E

So the first question was um what will become of the sun when it runs out fuel and dies? Second question is, that is how does the sun produce energy.

A

Yeah so yeah, so today, of course, the sun is producing energy. We feel it as as heat and see it as light and uh that's been going on for a long long time and it's going to keep going on for a long time, but it will not go on forever right yeah. So, however, the sun is making energy today that will not last at some point. It will run out of whatever it's doing up there and our sun will will die and then what happens? To that all right?

A

Do we need the uh jeopardy music again.

C

All right question: two: by uh answer by steve fusion: okay,.

A

Yeah, okay right, so the sun generates energy through fusion nuclear fusion right. So the sun is a giant nuclear reactor of sorts. Where yeah we said earlier, the sun is made mostly of hydrogen gas right hydrogen and in the core of the sun, that hydrogen gets smashed together and undergoes nuclear fusion. The hydrogen fuses together to produce helium the kind of stuff that you find in party balloons, and it turns out that fusion process generates huge amounts of energy. That then, like I said, we we feel as heat and see as light so yeah.

E

What about the first question? Any ticker won't be weird.

A

Yeah well, yeah yeah cause the hydrogen won't last forever right. So again, don't worry. It's not gonna run out tomorrow. We got plenty of time right. The sun's been doing this for about four and a half billion years, and it's gonna keep going for about that. Much more, but eventually the hydrogen will be largely consumed and.

C

We do have an n, we do have an answer from marianne, it will puff up and become a red giant. Then it will become a white dwarf.

A

Yeah, all right so so stars go through life cycles, thanks marianne right, so yeah. So eventually our sun will actually swell it'll, become larger and larger right and and that's when it goes into its right giant phase and when it starts to do that, it will appear larger and larger in the sky and eventually it will, I think, possibly even bump, into the orbit of the earth. We won't be here anymore.

A

At that point you know we'll have moved out by then, let's say um but yeah, and after that the sun will puff out its outer layers. It kind of will blow a giant cloud of material out into space. It's not exactly an explosion, but it kind of poofs it out and then in the center that we left something called a white dwarf, which is inert material, mostly carbon and oxygen.

A

That will be hot for a long long time, but it will no longer be producing fusion energy, so yeah, that is in our distant distant future, and the cool thing is: if you visit nighttime star parties, you can look at objects in the night sky that have already done this right. So you can see the kind of thing that our sun will turn into by looking at parts in space where this has already happened. So I encourage you to check that out on this one all right. Thank you.

E

A

All right, let's see, moving on um yeah, okay, so speaking of you know the sun and it poofing up and all that there's a quick video here in terms of size comparison. I think this is pretty pretty cool um because yeah we, you know, I said earlier, that our earth is pretty small compared to the sun, and this little video gives you a much better feel for the relative sizes of things, and it is pretty amazing, I think so yeah.

A

So here's, our moon and if we go from there mercury is a bigger object and then mars is there and then we get to venus. Venus is pretty close in size to earth. Actually right, it's a little smaller, but you can see the earth next for comparison.

A

Now, then, from the earth we'll take a big step up to neptune. These are now the gas giants, right, neptune, being the first one, there's saturn and then jupiter, which is the largest object in our solar system other than the sun and boom. Here's our sun right, pretty big, but just in case you thought our sun was big. Well, it's not nearly the biggest kid on the block. Here's a star called sirius, then a star called pollocks and notice. By the way the earth has long disappeared in the bottom of the video right.

A

So now we're looking at our tourists, that's a star! That's actually up in the night sky right now, aldebaran and I'm starting to lose our sun down there right. It's become pretty much too small to see. There's a thing called the pistol star. Look at how big these things are. You know antares, that's also a star. That's visible right now in the night sky,.

A

Yeah, so you know, I find this video just mind-blowing right, think about how large things are out there right. So yeah, you know, so our earth is pretty big, would take us a long time to walk around it. Our sun is very large compared to the earth, but there are stars out there that are just so much bigger than the earth and if you were to take some of those stars and plop them where the sun is yeah, the earth would be inside them. No problem.

A

Okay, oops. We already get the answers, I'm sorry, I messed up my own flow, but that's: okay, hey! This is live tv folks, all right! Moving on! uh Let's talk about the structure of the sun a little bit more! This goes back to one of the questions that we actually had a moment ago. When we talked about you know what is producing energy in the sun and yeah. So let's talk about the structure that goes with that answer so inside you know the core of the sun. That's where the nuclear reaction happens.

A

That's where the nuclear furnaces!

A

This is where hydrogen is fused into helium and the energy comes from, but moving out from this layer, we go through this thing: labeled number two, which is the radiation zone, and this is kind of a cool region, actually cool as in interesting, uh because what happens is that energy will be produced in the core, so a photon, a particle of light or energy will zip out of the core and it will enter the radiation zone and it turns out it will take thousands to possibly millions of years for that little photon to make it through the radiation layer.

A

And the reason this happens is that this photon takes essentially a random walk. So the photon zips across the one to two boundary and it will almost immediately run into a hydrogen atom. Let's say right, it'll run into something that hydrogen atom will absorb it and then re-emit the photon in a different direction. So the photon comes out and then bounces off in a different direction, and then this will keep happening so it'll be the zigzaggy random, walk and eventually, just by luck.

A

That photon will make it to the 2-3 boundary and be able to leave the radiation zone. So this random walk yeah. It can take variable amounts of time. You know thousands to millions of years.

C

And wolf, one thing to add: there is um for people that want to visualize that they can visualize it as a pinball machine right. So you've.

B

C

That ball that's bouncing around and just keeps them bouncing till it finally gets a chance to exit.

A

Yeah I like that thanks, that's another good analogy. I agree yeah, so it's essentially kind of a random bounce right it'll go crazy for quite a while there, possibly until it finally makes it out thanks and yeah. So then, once we made it through the radiation zone, we enter this third layer, which is called the convection zone. That is a zone where energy is transferred largely by boiling it's the same kind of thing.

A

That would happen in a pot on your stove, if you, let's say boiling noodles or something right in a noodle pot, yeah you'll, you'll, see water bubbling up in different regions right from the bottom and energy is, is transferred by the water circulating in your pot, and the same type of thing is happening in the convection zone and we'll talk about that a little bit more shortly, but once you make it through the convection zone, then yep we're at the photosphere. We talked about that before.

A

That's where the light is generated that then is emitted out. We get to see it and so yeah, while it took a photon, maybe a thousand, to a million years to get through the radiation layer. You know once it leaves the sun to get to us boom. They only got eight minutes to go right. So the light speed distance from the sun to the earth is about eight and a third minutes pretty fast. At that point, um okay, beyond the photosphere, we have the chromosphere. We talked about that.

A

It's like the innermost layer of the solar atmosphere. There's a lot of verified hydrogen there. Then we go out to the corona that we've mentioned before we mentioned sunspots before these are structures that appear within the photosphere. We'll see a little more of that in a moment, and then there are these things called. uh You know granules. These are essentially the convection regions right, the different boiling regions and we'll see more of that also and then prominences. So prominence here is like this loop here.

A

It's illustrated like this loop, and this is hydrogen plasma charged hydrogen gas. That is following magnetic field lines and yeah. We saw a little bit of that just a moment ago in our live view. Even okay, let's talk about sunspots a little bit more, so yeah we get those in what we call the white light view.

A

You know so at the very beginning, when I showed you telescopes with a solar filter on the front, um that kind of setup would be fantastic, for looking at sunspots turns out that right now the sun is not really offering us any sunspots to see and I'll explain later why that is so. This is a picture from you know, past years, but here we have really nice sunspots yeah. You can see like this. This really big guy lots of other ones nearby, and here's more or less the same picture with the earth for comparison.

A

Yeah, so sunspots can be huge. They can be the size of, let's say a major city here on earth, or they can be big enough to swallow up the entire earth and in fact back in, I think it was 2014. There was a sunspot that was so big that you could see it with the unaided eye. I mean you had to wear your eye protection, but you did not need a telescope or binoculars. You could just look at the sun wearing your solar protection, glasses and yeah.

A

That was a big enough sunspot that you could just see it that way. So that was pretty amazing. Here's a close-up view up on that.

C

You have your own personal, uh dark spot.

A

Okay: here's a yep here's an orange with a dark spot, there's a sunspot on a fruit. As I told you at the beginning, rashes.

B

F

A

Master now you know what that means.

A

Okay, so and here's this close-up view of a sunspot right, so you can see there's this dark region here and actually this is a little misleading. You know it looks dark. It looks black right, but actually it's still really hot and bright. Just relatively speaking, it is not as luminous as the region around it. So it appears dark to us, but it is actually still quite hot and bright. It's just a relative appearance, but yeah there are these cool. You know fantastic structures, kind of reaching out from the sunspot.

A

These are all these different kind of boiling regions.

A

And yeah speaking of boiling regions right, so this is a close-up image that was taken earlier this year. I think this was from february. This is pretty new science, so this is a very high resolution picture of the photosphere and yeah each one of these little granules here is essentially a boiling region like you would see in your noodle pot. So this this is just a really amazing picture. I think, and uh and I'll ask you a question here: do you like miso soup?

A

I do so you know when I wasn't stuck at home all the time I would sometimes go to japanese restaurants, and one day I was looking at the miso soup and going hey. You know what this looks. A lot like what's happening on the sun, because yeah, so here right, you see, kind of the miso is rising up right because the soup is hot and the miso kind of comes up and then circles around that's the kind of convection action. That's also driving the sun.

A

And so yeah next time you know look closely at the hot soup in your bowl and you know you can do some mental solar science. You know right there and yep, so we just looked at the miso soup in action, and so here again is the miso soup of the sun. So let me show you a video of that, because I think this is pretty nice.

A

Where are we here? We go: okay, yeah, so here's an animation of this right, so uh this was again taken by the or distributed in february as new science, and you can see actually a time lapse of this boiling or convection action on the outer layer of the sun there on the photosphere. So pretty pretty neat, I think.

A

And just to put this into context so yeah, so you know the the big square image. I showed you in the prior slide. That was this part of the sun right here and then, if we zoom into this further, you can use you see these detailed convection regions and look here's texas for comparison. You know so lipika lives somewhere in here. She would live somewhere in one of these tiny, tiny spots.

A

Okay, so we just talked about the photosphere and the sunspots we see there and then, if we move out a little bit into the chromosphere right, the first atmospheric layer, that's where we see this orange skin texture again that we mentioned earlier, and you can see these features around the edge of the sun and also again, here's some of these scars or scratches that I mentioned earlier all right and here's a slightly closer view of some of this stuff. And here you can really see well what's happening.

A

So here again is one of these eruptions, and especially this one is cool, because you can really see the three-dimensional structure of it. So, like we said before, strong magnetic fields are driving hydrogen plasma away from the sun and in this case it's creating almost like this shark fin or blade-like structure, and you can see that the structure you know sticks out from the edge but also continues into the disk of the sun.

A

So it turns out that these these scratches are scars that we see, which are actually called filaments, are essentially the same thing as this stuff on the side which we call prominences. So a prominence in the filament are really the same type of thing, but we see them differently right, it's a different perspective, so we call them a prominence when they're on the edge and we call them a filament when they're here, but they are the same type of thing.

A

They're a three-dimensional eruption right, that's reaching out from the sun strong magnetic fields, driving hydrogen plasma. Here's again the picture that I showed earlier my quicky picture from 2017, and now maybe you can see a little better what's going on, so this w shape is one of these big filaments and yeah. You can kind of see this is raised right. It's three-dimensional! It's sticking out from the sun and here is a there's, a prominence right there right and so with this.

A

Maybe we'll take another quick look at the backyard and see um what's happening there and so yeah. So now you can. You can maybe appreciate a little better what's happening here. Let's see, let me get the telescope control.

A

Okay, let's see we'll just let's, let's focus just a little more on just this guy here.

A

And so what I'll do is I'll I'll increase the exposure a little bit, so I will make the disk of the sun brighter, but it will also highlight that prominence a little bit more yeah, so the prominences come in all kinds of shapes, partly dependent on on our perspective. You know from what angle we're watching and also driven by uh what the magnetic fields are doing on a particular day. So there's this this nice poof, you know of material. That's sticking out here and again.

A

The earth is pretty small compared to this, so this could engulf the earth. Okay, let's.

C

Take another quick question.

A

Sure go ahead: russian! What you.

C

Got yeah, I'm just going to say it seems like the sun forgot to shave today, but you got.

A

One single strand.

C

Stick your knot right there.

A

C

A

You're right I mean sometimes the sun is in terrible shape. Right. It's got. uh It's got whiskers all over the place, uh but actually up here you can see it's pretty smooth. There's a little. I don't know. I see like a little dimple here and here, but that's that's almost too tiny to really talk about, but yeah up there. It's pretty smooth.

A

Let's see but let's, let's turn the exposure back a little bit so now that you can see this is kind of cool right here. You can see some structure within the disk of the sun right. So here again, these shapes are largely driven by magnetic fields that are pulling the hydrogen plasma in one way or the other and, like we said earlier down here, it looks like there's some small filaments, so these are really 3d structures that are sticking out. You know towards us.

C

And one of the reasons why I always bring an orange to this session is because this becomes a great aid right, especially if you are walking children through or explaining things to them. Orange becomes a great aid to explain. You know the the surface of the sun, even dark spots, or even or even filaments. You might have scratches on the surface of of the orange itself, and you can use that as an example.

A

C

B

A

Right here, there's like a little little prominence right, there's a little bit of a proof here. Go.

E

Ahead, nancy: hey wolf, um so I just have a question, something like what we just saw. That was whisker that russia was referring to a size of that. How long do you think it lasts before it dissipates? Is there a way.

A

Good, I don't know if yeah, how long does it last before it goes away right? I don't have a good answer for that particular structure, but I think in general, problems will last for hours to days I mean they do change right, because things are moving and in fact, I'll show you some cool time lapses of this kind of stuff in a moment, but yeah prominence will will be there.

A

You know changing over time a little bit but be there for hours to days and sometimes when uh we are sitting out on the sidewalk in hoagie park. We start the event at two o'clock typically, and it ends four and sometimes over the the course of the two hours we can see actually some change in those structures. Now it's two things: it's the filament or I'm sorry, the prominence itself changing, and it's also that the sun is rotating. So both of those things are causing changes in perspective. But the point is yeah.

A

We can actually detect changes in these structures, you know and how they appear to us, sometimes even over the course of one afternoon event.

E

Okay yeah, I guess it reminds me of the last time that we were doing the presentation. We started with a a a prominence, but then, through the course of the presentation, it did go away.

A

Yeah right, so I think there are multiple things happening. Actually so so, yes, sometimes you know uh things actually get worse. Unfortunately, right sometimes we start out with a pretty nice prominence showing up um at the beginning of the event and then an hour later, it's like whoops. Where did it go and a few different things will have happened there right it's, not necessarily that the prominence itself disappeared, although it could have actually changed on its own, but like we're actually showing that the sun actually rotates right. um So the problems may have rotated.

A

You know out of view or just changed angle, so we can't see it so well. um Also, unfortunately, right now you know my telescope is sitting in the backyard and I cannot keep tuning it. The fact that it's hot out there changes. Actually you know the heat causes things to expand and the like right, so in hoagie park, I'd be tweaking the filters and the focus as we go through the two hours here. I cannot do that.

A

So part of the problem also is that the telescope settings will drift a little bit from the ideals um and then finally, there is just yeah atmospheric disturbance that could change right. So how noisy the atmosphere is and how much it degrades to view can change over the course of an afternoon and that can also, unfortunately, sometimes ruin the image we get. What we get, okay, cool, all right, let's go back here and yeah.

A

Let me show you some pictures of fantastic prominences from uh past years, so yeah look at this thing right, so this is of course way bigger than what we are getting right now, in our real-time view. So this is, you know, quite spectacular promise. You can see there's a lot of activity here on the sun, and here is a video that I want to show you that I've referred to a moment ago. This is a nice time lapse of a prominence forming and then kind of disintegrating, and it's uh it's just a beautiful video.

A

So you can see this was back in 2012 28 years ago.

A

All right so here, of course, is the sun is seen by equipment that we have out in space and now we're going to be zooming in on a region where all the excitement will happen.

A

So you can see there's something going on already right, there's, definitely a bright region, so there's something of high energy there and something is now developing and you can see that there is an arc forming, so magnetic fields are pulling hydrogen plasma up from the sun and it's growing so again. This is a time lapse. It does not happen this quickly in real time.

A

Oh yeah, so you see the loop forming and you can already see this becomes more prominent in a second here, but you can already see that material is kind of dripping down right, so gravity of the sun pulls the material back. Magnetic fields are pulling it up and then gravity's pulling it back down. Creating this this, what they call fiery rain. So this is just a beautiful, spectacular image in my mind and you can see the earth there for scale right. So you know you could shoot the earth or even a much bigger planet.

A

You know right through that loop, so I just think this is quite quite beautiful.

A

ah Rashi's asking whether jupiter could make it through the loop- uh and I think jupiter was a little too big for that one right, I think uh I think uh shoot. I should know this off the top of my head, but, like I said, I'm bad with numbers. That's always my excuse right um how many hours for the cross jupiter 12, something like that.

A

That's probably.

C

I'm planning that I don't know something like.

A

That right, so I think jupiter might have been a tight squeeze for that one, but we can certainly get these structures that are big enough to shoot the jupiter through as well wow yeah, and so here we have some uh views of prominences from total eclipses right. So this was from 1999, so this is actually quite fantastic. So if you have not seen a total eclipse yourself, hey go check it out in 2024..

A

Normally we need our hydrogen alpha telescopes to isolate the hydrogen alpha light that red light right that reveals to prominences, but during a total, solar eclipse, you can see them with. um You know outdoor special filters. You still need to have your eyes safely, protected, of course, but uh but when the disk of the sun is blocked, you know all that bright light that usually just blinds us from everything else is, is hidden and then these details around the edge just pop into view and so yeah.

A

So these prominences here were visible without special hydrogen alpha filters during a total eclipse. So it's just really nice here. This is from 2017. This is actually a picture I took. I got lucky. This was an iphone picture at the eyepiece of my telescope. I wasn't even trying that hard and I just got lucky the the moon is just moving out of the sun, so this is just as the total eclipse is ending.

A

So that's why you can see this this bright sliver of light here right, so the sun is starting to reappear, but it's it's still not bright enough that it's washing out this prominence. That's sticking out and when I looked at the telescope to see this feature, I was kind of unprepared for that. This just kind of blew me away. It was just really amazing to see the prominences so distinctly without a hydrogen alpha telescope. So I highly recommend you checking this out and here here's another total eclipse and look at this prominence right here.

A

The prominence is huge: it's almost like a handle on a bowling ball or something right. It looks like this big handle, and not only is this a cool prominence uh during a cool solar eclipse where you can also see in the the corona you know reaching out into space but notice.

A

This was from 1919, so this picture is historic for a key reason that it was used to help demonstrate that einstein's theory of relativity really works, because the theory of relativity predicts that the gravity of the sun or other highly massive objects will bend light around them and so yeah. So this solar eclipse was used to demonstrate that fact- and you know every test that we have thrown at the fear of relativity since then has held up.

A

So einstein has been doing quite well, since he came up with that stuff, so here's a few more prominences again. This is just you know, amazing this. This big thing reaching out into space. Here's one of those giant loops right here if we can probably fit jupiter through it pew no problem. I think right and here's another really uh amazing huge arc, and let's see we actually have a video of that kind of a thing happening. So let's run that.

A

So, as you can see a lot of these videos, I've um pilfered from nasa right. So these are things you can look at yourself if you like they're, available on youtube or on the nasa site- and it's amazing- you know what our technology and our instrumentation allows us to reveal about, in this case the sun. So again you can see the loop forming in this case it's actually ejected out into space right. The prior picture. We saw the prior video of the looping rain.

A

You know, gravity was pulling the material back down to the sun, but sometimes the event is so energetic that stuff is actually ejected out into space and that's what's happening here.

A

Okay, so here's, I think, the same thing just one more time from the perspective of the whole sun boom right, spitting this out into space. So.

B

Very energetic events.

A

Okay, we can take another quick question: break did anything pop up in the chat.

C

No, we don't have any comments or uh or questions that have come up. I mean, of course, appreciation for for some of the images and, of course, some association with food.

A

Okay, uh otherwise.

C

A

All right, okay, should we give the wheel? Another spin then see if we get any interesting questions from our circular.

E

Saw yeah sounds good, so I think the fact that there isn't any question I think wolfe did a good job, just explaining all the details associated with the topic. So uh he covered everything.

C

Or we're all in food coma.

A

Or was in food coma yeah, maybe maybe it was too close to lunch. I don't know.

D

So category f: okay, let's take a.

E

A

It's a tesla we'll have to email it to you and you can print it out or something.

E

That's right: uh this is something pretty close to what you mentioned just now, how many jupiters would fit across the diameter of the sun? Oh.

A

Okay, there you go all right.

E

Okay, so we just mentioned that kind.

A

Of yeah- and actually I don't- I'm not even sure the exact answer, because I always forget these these details. So uh in a moment we will get the right answer.

E

Okay- and that's I okay- let's see for that. Okay, the question is: what is a solar filament.

A

Okay, so that one too, if you were paying attention, you should know this one so uh dig deep in your memory. You know about five minutes back and uh you know you already have the answer so.

E

Let me repeat first question, please, is how many jupiters would fit across the diameter of the sun. Second question is: what is a solar filament.

A

Cool all right, and while folks think about that- let's see so, um we can just show another little video here. Let's see where to go, so it just pulls together. Some of the stuff we've been talking about right. So, while you guys are thinking about those questions and popping your answers into the youtube chat, here is a video of just a cool surface action or chromosphere. Actually on this one.

A

So yeah different kinds of prominences right, so you can get material erupting from the sun in different shapes.

B

A

Driven by magnetic fields of different types or different sizes,.

B

A

Shapes yet ever changing and notice these all images in different light right, so some appear, yellow some appear reddish. These are all images taken by instruments, mostly through light that we actually cannot see directly with our eyes right, but we see it with technology and then we remap it to colors that we can see.

A

So here's a lot going on right. You can definitely see, but there are structures that seem to look like magnetic field lines topic we'll talk about a little bit more in a moment, so yeah kind of cool stuff. Okay, so, let's see did we.

C

So steve says for question two: a prominent looking edge on.

A

Okay, yeah exactly so, we said the filament is the same as the prominence right, but it's uh we're kind of seeing it in the disk of the sun. So that's why I refer them off like they look like scratches or scars yeah.

B

E

What about the other question, how many jupiters would fit across the diameter of the sun any take or any guess.

C

D

What do you think rashi shall.

C

We shall we give it a countdown tick, tick, three tick, tick, two one and a half one and a quarter. One are nancy. All yours, okay,.

D

C

E

About ten, the answer is about ten about ten jupiters can fit across the diameter of the sun.

A

Okay, so you know make sure my brain remembers that for next time, so thank you, okay, cool all right. Let's go ahead and move on here and let's talk about um the solar cycle, so excuse me turns out the the sun has weather. Well, you know in fact we've seen examples of this weather right, so you could describe some filaments and prominences some of the eruptions that we've seen is like solar storms.

A

If you will right so, the sun has changing conditions just like we have changing atmospheric conditions here on earth, so so there is a type of solar weather and that weather goes through a major cycle. Just like we have our seasons here on earth right, so we kind of have a yearly cycle where we go through spring.

A

You know summer fall and winter. You know something sort of like that happens on the sun as well with its own cycle and here's an illustration of this from the past. So there's a cycle that started in 1996 and the representation here you can see in the back. The sun looks yeah relatively boring right.

A

It looks kind of uniform, not a lot going on couple bright spots here, but on the whole, not so much, but then, as we move towards the front as we go through the years in 2001, you can see that the sun has a lot more going on right, there's a lot more bright regions, meaning there's some energetic action going on, and then this diminishes again as we go through back to 2006, which completes the cycle and so yeah. So the solar cycle is an 11 year thing right.

A

So while we have seasons that iterate every year, the solar cycle is an 11 year cycle and let's kind of see what's going on there, but here's a different representation of this so solar cycle 22 was the one from like 85 to 97 solar cycle. 23 is roughly what we just saw, I think on the prior slide and we just completed solar cycle 24.. The the curve that you're seeing here a lot of wiggly lines are oops. Sorry, my fingers looked so the wiggly line. You're. Seeing here is the sunspot count.

A

So um all the time nasa counts, the number of sunspots on the sun and the number of sunspots is an indicator of how active the sun is right. So how many dark freckles you get little ones. Big ones indicates how active the sun is, and so the wiggly line is the actual sunspot count, and then this is averaged, and that gives you this smooth line, that you see kind of going through the middle here, okay, and so the last solar cycle started around. You know here: 2010ish, okay and then look where we are right now.

A

ha You know we are here 2020 and this this line is basically hitting a minimum, we're almost at zero again right for some spots, and so that's why I couldn't show you sunspots today, because there aren't any right, so the sunspots are far and few between at this point in the solar cycle, back in 2014, when I mentioned, I saw this giant sunspot.

A

You know on this on the sun that I could see just by wearing eye protection without any magnification yeah. That happened right here during um the you know, peak time right. That's when the last solar cycle was at its peak of activity, so yeah.

C

So unfortunately,.

A

We're right here right now, so that makes it a little hard for us to find exciting features on the sun, but still today. Actually the sun offered us some kind of fun stuff to see, but so what's happening here. Is that it's all about magnetism right? So the sun is mostly hydrogen plasma.

A

Like we said you know, hydrogen plasma is essentially hydrogen atoms that have had their electrons ripped from their nuclei, and so it's really a tremendous soup of protons, which are positively charged and electrons that are negatively charged and charged soup is moving around partly through convection, like we said earlier right, so the boiling action moves the soup around and the soup also moves because of another thing called differential rotation of the sun. So with the boiling we talked about already, let's quickly visit this rotation idea, so here uh is a diagram of the sun.

A

That kind of illustrates it how it rotates around its own axis. So just like the earth. You know the earth is spinning around an axis and for us you know, one rotation is pretty much one day, no matter where you are on the earth. You know it takes one day for the earth to make a revolution around its axis. The sun is a little more interesting in that regard. The sun is like we said at the beginning.

A

It doesn't have a solid surface right, it's basically a sloshy ball of hydrogen, and, and so it turns out, the rotation rates are different, depending on where you are on the sun. What your latitude is so right near the pole turns out. If you were to stand right here, you couldn't really stand there, but just you know imagine for a moment. If you stood right here, it would take you about 35 days to make one whole loop around.

A

You know one revolution around the pole, but if you're on the equator, hey look the equator actually spins faster right, so turns out. If you stood here, it would take you only 25 days to revolve all the way around so yeah. It turns out that this rotation is not the rotation. Speed is not uniform across the latitude along the sun, it actually varies, and so this is what we call differential rotation and and the impact that has is as follows.

A

So imagine for a moment that we hit the reset button right and everything starts out nice and smooth, but now the equatorial region actually rotates faster, and so, as things rotate, you can see that yeah, you know the equatorial region is getting dragged along faster than everything else right so near the equator. Excuse me near the pole here things rotate slowly near the equator, they rotate faster and so as time progresses.

A

This gets dragged more and more to the point where over here it gets all twisted up right, and this twisting is part of uh what causes all the interesting magnetic activity right, because the charged soup that makes up the sun is being twisted in this way and as we move and twist magnetic soup, if you will right charge soup, then the magnetism becomes very complex and that creates the solar activity essentially, and that gives us our 11-year cycle, because here things are pretty clean right, it looks kind of like it does over here.

A

Then we go through we kind of reach maximum messiness around the peak of the solar cycle, and then it turns out over time it essentially unwinds itself and kind of repeats this cycle so uh and yeah. It's all about magnetism like we said right. So you've probably seen pictures like this. You know north south.

A

This could be like a simple bard magnet like you might have used in science experiments in school, and you know you've probably seen pictures like this, where the magnetic field lines are drawn, and here is a bar magnet uh where it's like hidden under a piece of paper and magnetic iron filings were put on top and if you kind of tap that turns out, the iron filings will arrange themselves along the magnetic field line.

A

So this is a representation, a real physical representation of this diagram, and so this is what magnetic field lines look like when we play with the bar magnet- and you know the same kind of thing is happening on the sun, because moving charge creates very magnetic fields. The magnetic fields can in turn affect the motion of the charged soup and all this interaction right can then slowly can can locally slow the convection causing sunspots right.

A

So we said the outer layer of the sun is this convection zone where things are boiling, but if you have strawmatic fields they can stop or suppress the boiling, and then you get a locally cooler region that becomes sunspot and also again, these strong magnetic fields can drive the prominences and solar flares and things like that. Here's a representation of magnetic fields on the sun, so you know you've, probably all seen a picture of the earth with the arithmetic field. It's very orderly.

A

You know north pole, south pole, it's very boring, relatively speaking, which is good for us, because we can use something like a compass to help us find north, but the sun is much more messy with regard to its magnetic fields. So here uh is a representation of the magnetic fields of the sun on march 12 2016., so a bunch of measurements were taken and then computer models were run that extrapolated these magnetic field lines, and you can see it's a big mess right. It's like you woke up in the morning.

A

You forgot to comb your hair, especially now with uh you know, pandemic hair right. This is very much kind of a messy organization and you can see that on a different day, there's a different messy organization right. So here is the same type of picture, but from a couple years later and every day this changes some right.

A

So the magnetic details- and you know fields on the sun- they vary all the time and they are what are driving the overall solar cycle and on a given day they give us different, sunspots and different prominences and filaments, and with that let's see, should we take another moment for questions.

C

Before we before we get into that uh a couple of comments, I'd like to make um so the differential rotation that you talked about can also be seen with our outer planets. um So you can see that with jupiter or saturn. You can see that uh you know how the the equatorial regions move faster than uh going closer to the bolts. That also causes a little bit of more of a bulge in in the center, as opposed to uh you know, when you're reaching out to to to the polar uh regions.

C

A

Can definitely see that yeah, it's an interesting point, so actually it turns out that I mean even um yeah. So all these celestial objects that are that are rotating around the axis they're, actually not spheres right. Even the earth is not a sphere, we know for sure the earth isn't flat. So let's get that out of the way right. But then we said oh great, the earth is a sphere.

A

It's like well, that's more true than the earth being flat, but actually it's also not perfectly true, because actually the earth is is a squished sphere, and that is because.

C

A

Spinning around its axis, so all things that spin around their axes essentially are a little fatter around the waist. You know and they're kind of you know squished spheres, so the sun does this. The earth does this but yeah good point. So the outer gas planets right. um You know because they have to some in some ways the structure more like the sun right. The earth is rocky. The sun is a gas blob. The outer planets are gas, blobs right so yeah. So there you can see the differential rotation as well.

C

Yeah and and one other thing to call out regarding the thesaurus cycles, these the solar cycles are not from the time that the sun formed it's when we started actually recording solar cycles, so that started roughly, I think, about 1755 or so so now we are in the 25th solar cycle.

A

Yeah good point right so yeah. Thank you. Russia, that's a good clarification, but on the diagram I showed they were labeled like you know: 21 22 23. But yes, the sun has been around for way more solar cycles than that. It's just when we started realizing. This was going on and we started labeling them. So yeah good point.

D

Okay, I have a question: okay,.

E

Okay, so regarding the solar cycle, you were talking about magnetic fields and how it relates to sunspots. Is there a way to predict sunspot at this point according to scientists or or is it just day in and day out, observation.

A

um Good good question, so I don't know if I have a really authoritative answer for this right. I mean I science. We are doing solar signs in part to help us predict what happens and we'll actually talk about that. A little bit more. You know when we get into the news segment today, uh because yeah solar weather is is actually very important to us.

A

I mean one is just cool to look at through telescopes, but it turns out in really extreme cases what happens on the sun can really have a strong impact here on the earth. Day-To-Day impacts might be. How pronounced the northern or southern lights are right, which I've never seen. One of these days, I have to go see them. I want to go, see the aurora right. Some of you may have had a chance to see it before I don't know, but yeah. So how strong?

A

How active the sun is on a given day would affect our northern lights. If the sun is emitting one of those huge blasts of uh of material that we saw earlier in one of the videos, then we could be in trouble if that actually hits the earth right. So if it goes off into empty space, which it does most of the time eh who cares?

A

But if just by chance it shoots off in the direction of the earth, we would be impacted and something like this actually happened, and I always forget the date. There was something called the carrington event uh back when telegraphs were the technology of the day. You know when, when the internet was just a telegraph wire, but there was a really powerful solar eruption and it hit the earth and this event actually energized the telus, the telegraph network, it induced electricity.

A

I think it caused some injuries and imagine if that happened today today our technology relies so much more on electrical things right than were in use back in the telegraph area. So now, if we had a powerful solar event hit the earth boy, we could be in trouble and that's one reason why we have. You know science, that's studying the sun and trying to figure out how these things work.

A

That's kind of along with an answer to say I don't know, but that's why it's important and that's why you know scientists actually do study this and do try to make predictions about these things. I'm trying to figure out.

C

A

These things better.

C

The carrington event was uh end of august, beginning september of 1859.

A

Thank you, okay. I know you've.

C

A

Me this once before, during this exact same uh event right, but I always forget thanks.

C

A

Okay, uh well, nobody else is asking us questions. We can we can spin a couple more times and see if a tesla comes up or uh you know, okay, we'll just get a question.

D

That's right: let's go for a tesla.

D

H, okay h comes up a few times today,.

D

Okay, so here's a question for h.

E

Is any of the radiation emitted by the sun harmful to us? If so,.

D

E

Okay, question number two: second, one.

D

I okay, oh, this is a good.

E

One, what um what causes auroras! Oh.

A

E

Yeah, so let me repeat, the questions um is any of the radiations emitted by the sun harmful to us. If so, what and then? The second question is what causes auroras.

A

Yeah, okay, all right guys so help me out here see if you can give us some answers, at least for the second one. I think I kind of gave it away a moment ago, although actually we didn't talk about it in in that much detail for the aurora, so yeah, please give it a shot and answer that for us in the chat and while you think about it, um let's see we can we can visit the live view one more time. So, let's see what's happening in the backyard.

A

All right so yeah, okay, so here's that prominence we saw earlier. um You may notice that you know when we started it appeared more like over here and now it seems to have moved and that's an artifact of how the telescope is tracking the sky. So that is is not something that the sun is doing. That's something that essentially our telescope setup is doing.

C

Yeah, I give our folks one question to you: a couple of choices: okay, four choices to pick from.

A

Thank you that sounds good. Okay, let's see, let's see oops wrong button, although hey there, you go yep, that's the so by the way yeah. So the telescope is sitting on a mount right. You can see you know: here's the telescope tube, the the lund 100 I showed in the slides earlier. This camera is sticking where the eyepiece would normally be.

A

That's where we would put our heads if we were to look through it directly now, there's a camera with the cable that goes to a laptop, that's sitting in the backyard and and the whole thing is sitting on a mount that is computer driven and it's actually tracking the sun. So as the sun is moving across the sky, the mount is moving and it's slowly, you know re-pointing the telescope to keep it aligned to the sun. So that's how we're able to talk here and go back to it and hey!

A

You know, still see something, because if you have a telescope that is not tracking the object that you're looking at will actually move out of the telescope very quickly. Within a matter of seconds, the the sun would have disappeared if the telescope were not automatically chasing the our current target of the sun and.

C

Well, maybe later on, it'll be good for you to add one or two points and why your camera is not getting fried.

A

uh Okay, sure I mean the short answer is that you know uh our eyes would be safe right because the camera is sitting in the same place where our eyeballs would be. So at that point where the camera is plugging the telescope, it is sitting after all the filters that make it safe for us to view with our own eyes, um but but yeah. That goes back to what we said earlier at the beginning.

A

Right you do need to have proper protection on your eyeballs and the binoculars, and if you want to try to take pictures of the sun, you need to have proper filters there too, because your sensors will be destroyed. If you don't have any filters uh in front of your camera right.

A

If you try to take pictures of the sun with let's say your dslr or something like that, so your sensors would be destroyed just like your eyeballs would be so, but in this case yep the camera is benefiting from all the same filters that our eyes would benefit from.

A

So let's see yeah again, I think here's we have uh yeah again. The filament is here so again keep in mind. This is three-dimensional, it's sticking out towards us. Actually, you can still see the orange skin texture and actually, if you look at it really closely, I don't know how well this is coming through on the youtube stream. But if you look at it really closely, there are moments when things seem to be slightly better in focus and the orange skin texture looks a little crisper a little more clear and yeah.

A

That is a lucky moment, while the atmosphere is otherwise causing the image to kind of wiggle a little bit and wash out.

A

Yeah, but we still have our prominence down here.

A

And yeah: if we turn up the exposure, then the disc of the sun becomes brighter, but uh you know we can see the filament. Excuse me the prominence a little bit better down here.

A

Oops, then, why am I clicking on the wrong button? There we go.

C

All right, steve's answered the uh the question to atomic particles from the sun.

A

C

For the auroras.

A

Okay, yeah exactly so atomic particles from the sun, essentially the kind of a solar wind right, so the sun actually constantly blasts out uh protons and electrons. Essentially the you know, parts of hydrogen nuclei um off into into space right. So there are charged particles coming towards us all the time just like they're neutrinos coming towards us all the time except while the neutrinos go through the earth through us.

A

The charged particles are actually intercepted by the magnetic field of the earth and they are re-routed such that they ultimately cause the uh northern and southern lights. So yeah, that's cool stuff. Has anybody actually seen them? I'm curious if you're in the chat and you've seen the aurora chime up chime in and let me know, then I can be properly jealous of you. So don't miss that opportunity.

C

A

Do you have oh okay, I'm jealous of you.

E

It was actually a trip, uh I went to alaska and uh it was like two o'clock in the morning. It's just beautiful something.

D

E

Never seen before, so it's totally worth it. uh If you haven't seen it before, you need to take a trip somewhere where you can see the walls.

C

Yeah see I make myself feel a little happy by turning on the lights that are northern facing in my apartment.

A

Yeah, I think that's gonna. That's gonna have to do it for me too, for now right until we can go visit alaska again, all right, let's see so what else do we have uh then.

C

No one's answered question one yet.

A

Okay, I actually forgot what is question one. I can't remember now, uh oh radiation of the sun right. Is it dangerous? uh I don't know what do you guys.

C

Think to it yeah.

E

A

Okay, so while people are guessing here, I'll show another video- I guess here right just to give folks a little more time to think about that so here this is based on another video that nasa just published very recently and.

A

So this really illustrates nicely: what's happened over the next or the last solar cycle and why today we're having a hard time finding, you know exciting details on the sun, so here this is 2010.

A

So this was uh you know around the beginning of the last solar cycle, and you can see that there's some stuff going on right. You can definitely see some of this magnetic activity on the edges. You can see there are these bright regions right where there is energetic activity so back in june of 2010 uh yeah, you know there would have been some interesting things to see through a white light telescope looking for sunspots or certainly through an age alpha scope like we're using today.

A

Now now we switch gears to october 2014., look at how much more active the summons right. So there's so much more going on. It's really obvious that they're just way more magnetic fields driving you know rearrangement of plasma, and actually here is this giant sunspots.

A

You can see it in the corner and the rotation matches the image below. So this, I think, is that giant sunspot that I saw that I described earlier that you could see just with the uh unaided eye.

A

So that's october, 2014 and now we are in may 2020. So that's now, basically, and look how smooth the sun is right. So here it's just like this this you know: fuzzy cuddly ball. Basically compared to that really energetic thing that was uh creating all those cool sunspots back in 2014..

A

So every now and then we do get something interesting like that. Little loop that you see right now and like the prominence we can see in the real view today, but yeah right now, the sun is pretty pretty quiet right and that's. Why we're having a hard time finding really big structures like it would have had back in 2014., so the sun does what it does.

A

You know and uh yeah you know so, every time we look at the sun, we just hope there's something interesting on a given day, but we will be heading back towards a new solar max and you know we'll see more interesting features in the future. Okay,.

C

Yeah many folks and many folks talk about the solar cycle as a heartbeat of the sun. So that's another way to another way to look at it.

G

Yeah and to go back to answering the question for number one well, the first thing I thought of was like okay, we apply sunscreen to protect ourselves from something so that.

A

G

Sun and so uv radiation.

A

Absolutely right, yeah, and especially I need this right. I will burn super easily if you stick me out in the sun for 15 minutes without sunscreen I'll be bright red, that's bad, uh it hurts I've had some really bad sunburns, and you know it's pretty slow learning that lesson, but these days, yes, I put on sunscreen to go outside because yeah, some of the uv variation is dangerous to us right it can. uh It can cause skin cancer, for example right and some of us are better adapted to bright sunlight than others right.

A

Partly a function of our skin pigmentation but yeah so uv light is, is something we need to be very conscious of yeah.

C

Yeah and marianne's answered as well on the chat with uh gamma rays. Disrupting dna x-rays can cause cancer, uv sunburn, ir heat heat burns, microwave cellular disruption, ultrasound can cause cavitation and, of course, the big question of how do we ever survive.

A

Yeah that kind of goes back to the ideas. Like you know. The universe in many ways is very inhospitable to us. Right I mean we enjoy our nice place here on earth. You know bay area and even austin texas, not so bad right, but yeah. There are lots of places in the universe that are actually quite inhospitable to life. So we are, you know quite lucky to be here, although it's really the flip side.

A

You know we are here because this place happens to be hospitable to life right, so we can look at it that way. Yeah.

C

And then she also answered her own question. We are protected by our atmosphere and our wits and knowledge yeah.

A

Yeah exactly so, the atmosphere is a really big deal. I mean you've, probably all heard about the ozone layer right. That was a big deal uh in the 70s. I guess right, um you know, use of certain propellants for spray cans and stuff right. You know it turns out. They would react with something called ozone. That's a type of oxygen. That's in the outer layers of our atmosphere and turns out.

A

Ozone is key for filtering out uv light and those chemicals were eating a hole into the ozone layer and turns out that's actually repaired itself to some extent, um but it's still there and we need to be conscious of these things right, because we can do things that inadvertently affect you know how protected we are from outer space and.

C

I think they were like chlorofluorocarbons right if.

A

I remember right.

G

Yeah, isn't it another thing that protects us jupiter and its moons to block craters? I think that's another like way that we get protected.

A

uh Good point yeah that that's that's those from excuse me not too much from radiation, but uh but yeah. You know certain um large objects right, you know, may be intercepted by by jupiter right, so we don't get smacked and have another event like the one that killed the dinosaurs, although that too could in principle happen right. So, just like there are folks watching the sun and learn to predict. You know dangerous events. There. We also have astronomers looking for asteroids right there are.

A

There are programs missions right that catalog asteroids to help us detect something that could potentially hit the earth and uh you know, cause an event like the one that that killed the dinosaurs and if we detect that early enough, yeah.

D

A

Even have some ideas for how we might uh you know protect ourselves, so it's cool stuff. Okay, let's see um we can uh take another quick look at the backyard.

A

I guess so in two minutes we're making the official transition to the second part of today, which will be the uh news and that's where nancy, lipica and emory will share their news items for the day, but before we start that we'll just let's visit the backyard one more time here and uh you know give folks who are dialing in specifically for three o'clock time to get a moment to connect.

A

A

Can the uh rashi can your can your son smile? Does that work? Oh it kind of works. Okay, there you go.

A

So we were joking earlier that, for uh you know, when we get close to halloween time right, maybe we should have a special online astronomy session, either day time or night time. You know where we will all be uh in disguise of sorts. You know we can have a halloween themed event.

A

Let's see okay.

A

Yeah, like I said earlier, keep in mind. You know if, if you uh are an sja member or if you want to become one you can through the loaner program, you know check out hydrogen alpha scope right that can help you get these kinds of images from your own backyard. So that's a that's a cool thing. You might want to entertain.

A

Okay and with that, um let's see, let's introduce ourselves again quickly for the second part of this show, so some of you might have just joined us. uh My name is wolf and I'm here with my crew for the day- and uh this is now the second part of our streaming solar sunday.

B

A

This half hour between now and 3 30 we're going to focus just on some live views of the sun. If you have not seen what the sun looks like today, we'll show you that, and we have a few short news items. So this is a new segment that we're trying you can. Let us know whether you like this or not, and you know that- can help us decide how to run these events for the future.

A

So but yeah here we are streaming solar sunday with topics and views of the month, so uh we can again for those of us who just those of you who just joined us. Let me quickly show you what's happening in my backyard. So as I do every time for you know these online solar sundays, I have a excuse me. I have a uh telescope set up in the backyard right. It's sitting on this mount that is automatically tracking the sun, as the sun is going across the sky and there's a telescope stuck in the back.

A

It's going to be a camera. The blue camera stuck in the back of the telescope, where the eyepiece would normally be, and that allows us to get a view like this oops come on there we go so this is the live view through that telescope with the blue camera in the back. So here is the sun, and you can see you know we have our orange skin texture of the chromosphere.

A

You can see that the image is wiggling a little bit right. That's atmospheric disturbance, let's uh zoom around a little bit here or pat around a little bit and see what we get.

A

And we know that we have something interesting near the bottom, so let's go and check that out so yeah. Let me turn up the exposure a little bit to bring out the faint features.

A

Yeah, so here, so this is what we've got today, so the sun is offering us pretty nice prominence. Actually, I think this is something bigger than we've seen during the prior months. Events, so here is a prominence where there's a pretty nice eruption kind of arcing over this way. So it's pretty cool and there are also some- I had some filaments here.

A

Yeah, you can see actually right here. So here is a filament feature.

A

Yeah so yeah it's a little fainter than it was earlier, but so here's a filament. So this is also a three-dimensional structure where hydrogen plasma is erupting from the sun, essentially the same thing as a problem, but it's just in the disk of the sun towards us. We can quickly look at the images I captured when we started so here yeah. This was when we started today, just just before we went online. This is a picture of that same prominence that you just saw on the bottom, so yeah.

A

This is what we had earlier, maybe a couple hours ago. You could see the prominence here and uh you know nice texture within the chromosphere and yeah. Here is the same thing just exposed a little more strongly. So this is where wrong way. Excuse me, so here we have the disc of the sun, of course, very brightly exposed, but that makes it easier to see the problems that we had here so yeah.

A

This is from a couple hours ago, and then I think the other capture I have here is something yeah, so that kind of shows again the other side.

A

And uh yeah there's a little bit of a prominence here right and uh yeah again: here's that filament that we that we saw okay yeah, so that's kind of what's happening on the sun right now. So we'll go visit that again in a little bit. But given that introduction to today's sun, let's go ahead and.

A

Go ahead and jump into our news topics for the day, so nancy will start us off talking about the solar, orbiter.

E

Thank you off so recently, the european space agency, or the esa, along with nasa, announced that the solar orbiter spacecraft, spotted previously unknown campfires on the sun, we're going to take a look at that today. So just a quick acknowledgement, all the information I'm sharing with you a poll from esa and nasa website. So it goes to them and also there's so much information about this mission, and I invite you to check out their website for more to learn more um a little bit about the timeline of the mission.

E

The um mission was scheduled to launch in july 2017. It get pushed back multiple times and it was finally launched in uh february 10 2020, just six months ago, at cape canaveral air force station in florida two days into launching the solar orbital deploy instrument and antenna to communicate with earth.

E

At the end of may, it captured the first images of the sun around the same time. It also passed through tails of.

E

In mid july, around two weeks ago, uh esa and nasa formally announced and released the first set of images that also include some of the images have campfires and we'll get to see those. uh Shortly and as of today, the spacecraft really hasn't officially started its science phase of the mission. Yet it has already produced some pretty mind-blowing results, and this mission is going to last into the year 2030..

E

Okay. So at this point, I'm going to take a look at the first image with you. This is the image of the many faces of the sun was taken by some remote sensing instruments on board. If you look at the top row, the yellow suns, along with the right, far right orange ones, as well as the middle one, the right center, those are captured by the same remote sensor. Sensing instrument at different wavelengths, the yellow ones, will capture at 17 nanometers and the orange one. The orange red one will capture at around. I believe 30.

A

Nanometers yeah, so this is all stuff we cannot see right. These are all kind of light that our eyes cannot see. We just need instruments right to see them.

E

Yeah, absolutely absolutely um so, and then I'm gonna, uh let's take a look at the left column, middle image that um that white image there. It really shows the magnetic map of the sun, the white and the dark uh regions. It really translates to the opposite. Magnetic polarities bottom left, the colorful one um is the uh the line of sight velocity of the sun. The blue is turning towards us and the reds turning away. Yes,.

A

This is like a doppler image. I guess right this.

E

Is actually a telegram yeah.

A

E

A

Actually, I don't know what.

E

That word means.

A

Either what does say that word again.

E

You know what I'm gonna have to explore, some more on that that is just direct directly copy. I haven't got a chance to to uh research too much on that something we can talk about later. Yeah.

A

That's actually really cool, I mean, maybe just if you don't mind I'll, add something quickly to this, because I mean yeah, it sounds like it's a you know. Even the blue and red uh seem to make sense in the context of doppler shift right and it's something we didn't talk about during the first half of today. But um you know the uh you know when when something moves towards you, like you've, all experienced this.

A

If you're standing at the side of the road and there's like a car with the horn, blaring driving past, you right, you'll first hear the pitch of the horn, elevated and then once it drives past you all of a sudden, the the tone or the pitches is lower right. It's like right and turns out light does the same thing right. So when something's moving towards you, the light is actually shifted towards higher frequencies towards the blue and when it's moving away, it's shifting shifted towards lower frequencies, the red.

A

So I think that that's why I was asking if this is like a doppler type image, and uh so that's.

E

Really cool actually.

A

So I didn't know.

E

Yeah, actually, I took a glance at it, but with the time slot that I'm given, I'm basically have to go through.

A

Sure I understand right, I just thought it was and.

E

Yeah, no, no good question good question. uh Actually it may be a good topic to bring up one of these days. Okay and then the last one, the lower center that smooth looking one much better than rashi's orange.

A

Placement he's.

E

Got texture mine doesn't have any texture that really shows the visible light image of that's what we would see with the naked eye. Okay, so.

C

Let's go to the next image and.

E

Yeah yeah the next image, I'm going to show you some campfires right there, so uh I want to get you familiarize yourself with the campfires in these images. I have them in little circles actually highlight that. Hopefully you can see that and these campfires you'll be able to spot them in the next. In the video clip. That's coming up, um please, okay, the video, please yeah.

A

E

Okay, so you can see there are campfires everywhere, the little ones they're. So tiny. These images were captured at 48 million miles away from the sun, so it's quite close um and.

A

So in comparison, how far away are we on the earth now actually right.

E

Now we're about 94 million from earth to sun, that's the distance, so this is about roughly half halfway.

A

E

Yeah yeah, so these campfires um they're believed to be a million or even a billion times smaller than the flare that we see from earth they're everywhere. So scientists really wondering if these campfires are just the really small version of the big flares or are they driven by different mechanisms?

E

Okay- and there are theories that campfires could be the um uh contributing factor to extreme temperature at the corona.

A

Yeah very cool.

E

So yeah this is so this.

C

Is detailed? We didn't even.

A

Know existed right, so this is yeah, so we had to get halfway from here to the sun to see this at all. So I think it's very cool.

D

E

Right right, so the tiny little one, the term campfire it took scientists a little while just to come up with how to name them. You know they come with, like micro, flare and mini flare, but they finally settled with campfires. um So that's going to continue, but so the purpose of this exploration is to answer some. Some big questions, they're very mysterious, mysterious questions, some of them, such as what happened in the polar regions, something that we don't know much about question about solar wind.

E

We still don't know everything magnetic fields and space weather, okay and the spacecraft will go outside of the ecliptic plane and climb to higher latitudes, where we'll be able to study more about the poles.

E

So in order to do that, its orbital path will remain in sync with venus so that it can take advantage of the gravity, assist flybys of both earth and venus to change the trajectory and climb above the ecliptic uh with that it.

A

Will the ecliptic being this picture we're clear about the ecliptic being basically the plane of all the planets right? So you have the sun here and you have the planets orbiting around the sun and essentially that that plane of the solar system is essentially the ecliptic right. So you're saying the spacecraft will climb above that right, yeah.

E

Correct correct so the be 10 pretty, basically the the rotational playing of the the planets. uh So um uh by doing so it will change the trajectories of the um of the spacecraft and be able to climb above the ecliptic and guiding it toward the innermost region of the solar system. So we can get more detailed data and and research further from there and there will be different stages of climb.

E

The initial climb is going to go up to 17 degrees and then it'll go up to 24 and eventually it'll go up to 30 degree latitude, which is which is fairly high, we'll be able to see quite a bit of the um the polar region.

E

um There will be eight venus flybys and one earth flyby for this mission, and eventually the solar orbiter will be placed into an elliptical orbit. uh That would be coming as close as 20 26 million miles from the sun. That would happen every five months or so.

A

Okay, did you want to show.

E

A

D

Yeah yeah: let's take a look at that.

D

I was going to show that.

E

In a minute, but this is the perfect time for it so as you can see coming up so this is the the solar orbiter's journey around the sun on the right you'll be able to see the timeline it will list what day the flyby uh venus will be and and it'll start with two flyby with venus and then it'll hit earth once and then uh to the end.

E

It'll be all the remaining one will be with venus, so there'll be a total of eight flybys, like I said, and then one earth flyby and a total of orbits. By the end of the mission, there will be 22 orbits toward the very end.

A

Yeah, this stuff is cool right. This is, like I always say, like math is the one way we have to really predict the future right crystal balls, don't really work, but you know here: we've predicted this entire thing for like the next, what ten years or so right all those orbital paths.

D

A

Intercepts you know.

D

E

Yes, so, as you can see after it, uh it fly by venus for the third time by 2021, between 2021 and 2025. The angle inclination will tilt, and you can probably see that you pay close attention.

E

You see a little tilt and then you see another tilt another tilt after every few orbits it will tilt a little more and then um as it go through when it comes to the closest point to the sun. It's going to really continuously capture data, a lot a lot of data as much as possible, so the spacecraft was built to carry 10 instruments, um of which six of them are remote.

E

Sensing instruments to measure what's happening, far away at far distances and then the other four instruments they are made to measure conditions around the spacecraft itself and then once scientists receive the data. The combined of the distances from far away and the ones surrounding they'll be able to combine and make a lot of good good conclusions, hopefully out of it and then, of course, we're going to get more um news, we're going to be able to learn so much more from scientists, okay, uh so and then.

E

Lastly, this is the image that's showing there's a green there's, a green line, which is the the spacecraft's uh orbital.

C

E

Okay and then right there, that's where it is right now you want to kind of.

A

This is where it started right. It started here right then this was where so it launched here right. This is from the earth right and then it comes around correct.

E

It follows the green today we are like.

A

Here or yesterday, this was here, I guess.

E

A little more yeah, yeah yeah, so just a little more so just so you have a reference point. We have not made one full revolution, but we'll get there cool and.

C

For the folks that, uh if you didn't figure this out, when you were watching the video, in addition to the orbiter's path, you actually had the uh inner planets and.

B

C

There as well they're making their rounds right. You had mercury, venus and earth, and in this image you you have mercury, venus earth and mars uh with the the white orbits and then, of course, the green path is of the orbiter.

E

And obviously the sun is right in the smacking middle of.

D

It so yeah, so the the.

E

Spacecraft, it did go inside beyond the venus uh orbit, of course, and then it could also go beyond the mercury orbit. Also, it come very, very close to the sun and at one point it comes as close as 26 million miles uh from the sun, and that happens every five months. Okay, so again, there's so much more about this mission, and it's so new and scientists continuously research and find out more about space weather, and that is essentially really protecting us earth.

E

So, if you're interested, please check out their website to learn more and I'll, take questions toward the end. Thank you, okay. That.

A

Sounds good yeah, I think so. I think this mission will probably give us news items for like the next decade right, so this will be very cool and- uh and this whole mission kind of reminds me of the new horizons spacecraft that we sent towards pluto a few years ago right because we knew pluto was there, we knew stuff about it. But as we got closer, you know and we're able to take close-up pictures. We learn so much more and this is kind of the same way.

A

It's like wow, look at all the cool stuff right that we see when we can take a closer look and that feeds nicely into our next topic, which uh lipika will cover for us predicting exclusive solar, flares.

G

Okay, thank you so yeah. So this is going to be about. You know: predicting um solar flares on the on the sun, so it like wolf and nancy talked about some solar flares can get so powerful that they're actually uh detrimental to earth and essentially us so yeah. So that's what we're going to talk about today, um yeah so trying to predict weather on the earth, like we said, is already hard enough when it's going to rain when it's going to snow, it's already hard for our forecast to determine that.

G

So you can probably imagine how hard it might be to determine whether on the sun and that through the orbiter and things like that, we're able to get closer and research more, but still it's quite difficult because we can't get it close enough proximity to it. So, in this image, you're looking at a solar flare, which is from nasa's solar dynamics, observatory they're, the ones who captured this and the solar flare is the one on the left. It's the blurb, that's shooting out! That's on the on the first one.

G

Basically, it's yeah the light yellow colored one, so solar flares are very powerful, bursts of charged particles um and plasma. So if these solar flares, like I said, if they get big enough, they can cause something called coronal, mass, ejections or cme. For short, um so it's really important the reason why it's so important for us to recognize when these happen and just understand them is because like they can, like, I said before, they're very deadly and they can essentially wipe out all satellite connections to earth.

G

So all the technology and all the internet that we're using we won't have access to it. So the reason we want to predict these and the reason it'd be good to predict this is so we can kind of prepare before it happens. There are ways that you can blockade and basically you can recover satellite information. There's lots of things that you can do so you can uh stop the effect from being that that big.

G

So that brings me to the research topic, so a group of research physicists in japan, they're trying to figure out ways to predict solar flares. So currently they predicted whether or not solar flares would occur where there's going to occur on the sun, but, most importantly, how powerful the solar flares will actually be.

G

um So in the next image.

G

This image is showing you a large solar flare that erupted on september, 10, 2017 and the kind of gray-scaled area background is the ultraviolet view from again nasa's solar dynamics observatory and then the red blurbs that you're looking the three the three red blurbs. You see that there's a variation of uh red to blue within the middle one and that's showing increasing microwave frequencies um and so yeah, the other two don't have blue. But there is some orange and red. So that's still a a increase of red to orange.

G

So in there a technique that the scientists use they use magnetic field lines, which is everything that you're the lines that are coming out of the sun um and what they do with these field lines and they use a computer model and they kind of overlay this magnetic field over over a spot with sunspots. So the article did not specify where the sunspots were, but they can either be where those red blurbs are shooting out or the edge of the sun, uh the yeah, the edge of the sun that we can see also for reference.

G

The sun is the as the thing that is closest to our image: yeah yeah, the circle so yeah. So, uh basically the reason like the reason, they're overlaying the magnetic field lines is, if you look at the twist, that's coming out from the the red that the furthest red blur to the one that is um nearest to us.

G

That's that amount of twists that the magnetic field is generating in the computer model and and overlaying that, with the actual magnetic field from the sun, that's what we're trying to see the change um of the site, and so this change is called a reconnection event. So in the next video we're going to look at what uh magnetic reconnection is so just to give you a little bit of context. A magnetic recon connection occurs uh when magnetic field lines are close and they're roughly.

D

B

G

um And this is this event happens when they merge, so what the energy that's released from this connection is kind of like when you have knotted rubber bands, and you like snap them together. There's this huge like there's a lot of energy that releases when the snap happens. So if you look at this video, this is kind of.

G

This is what it looks like.

A

Yeah, so these are really powerful events or they can be very, very powerful right, so they come in all varieties here and uh it's it's fun to see the modeling or in this case I guess it's an actual. You know recording of the magnetic activity here you can kind of see how the medic fields form and then separate and yeah. It's this abrupt reorganization is, is what triggers the solar flare with the strong emission of radiation and particles.

G

Yeah and yeah, just to kind of reiterate the reason why all this is important is so we can get, we can take predict preventative measures and, in order to you know, uh save us essentially um yeah. So it's really important to predict when these will happen so yeah, it's it's better for the earth yeah than absolutely.

A

Yep: okay, very cool. Thank you! Lupico, okay,.

C

And one other thing to add: there is uh these reconnection events, and also the campfires that nancy talked about are also important parts of why the corona happens to be a lot hotter than the surface, so they're, adding that energy is actually adding uh to to the corona and and making it so much hotter.

A

Yeah yeah there's actually something we didn't talk about so much. uh You know before we got to this point, but as a really quick aside yeah, you know, of course the core of the sun is where the energies produce that's super hot and then things actually get kind of cooler as we go to the outer layers of the sun like to the photosphere and corona. uh The chromosphere excuse me, but then yeah, the outer corona turns out to be super hot again right and it's like well. Why is that?

A

And so that's an interesting thing that scientists are still working on and yeah one one possible explanation here: is that these magnetic uh events right? They are transferring energy to the corona.

A

Okay, let's see, let's take another quick look at the backyard, because in a moment the sun will disappear behind the tree so before it does that we'll visit back there one more time and then we'll wrap up with the final topic from emory. uh Let's see all right, so here we are again in the backyard. Let me uh position the telescope a little bit.

A

I hit it when I hit the wrong button and it goes the wrong way. Okay. Now, so we still have this prominence here and it's probably getting a little harder to see, maybe because of just the uh atmospheric effects, but still there and every time I have this dark dot here and every time. I think I need to find this and clean it, and I always forget so this dot over here is not a feature on the sun that is dirt somewhere in my telescope.

B

A

Yeah things, I guess, haven't changed appreciably from when we looked at it a moment ago.

A

But yeah you know again, you can you know you can see the nice orange skin texture in the disc of the sun right, I think that's cool and yeah. We still have this problems going on down here, although I think it was, it was a little more pronounced.

A

I think, when the you know took these pictures earlier in the day.

A

A

Now so you guys can all cross your fingers that maybe the current solar minimum will come to an end soon and then we should be able to see a lot more exciting features on the sun, with our hl for equipment. So.

C

As long as a lot of the energy is not directed towards us,.

A

Correct, yes, so any of those big blues that could be happening up there. We prefer that go somewhere else, uh not walk towards our homes.

C

Lori does have a question: uh is the magnetic field of the sun different than ours due to the liquid swirling equator.

A

uh I guess maybe the question is: what would you mean by different? I mean I think it's it's different in terms of uh its arrangement and structure. The magnetism is the same physical phenomenon that we experience here on earth with our own field, but the fields are just way more complex and much more variable, whereas our arithmetic field is pretty stable, it actually moves around too, but it's really pretty stable. The er, the sun's fields are all over the place. All the time. Like those messy pictures I showed earlier.

A

If you were here during the first part, uh I showed those magnetic field pictures that were like you know morning, hair, especially if you haven't had a haircut for several weeks due to the pandemic.

C

A

Thanks sure, okay, let's uh switch back, I guess and we'll have wrap.

C

A

For us here with uh interstellar mapping and acceleration probe, the imap mission.

F

All right thanks! Well, so hey there so like liptica's topic, this will also be about emissions from the sun, but where elliptica discuss solar, flares I'll, be examining some different emissions from the sun like the solar wind magnetic field. So the focus of today is a new paper published by the princeton university's astrophysics department.

F

More more importantly, you can see a paper on the left side of the screen. It's about the imap pro the interstellar mapping and acceleration probe planned for launch by nasa in 2024, which you can see, is an example on the bottom right of the screen, so with 10, highly complex instruments and positioned at the sun or l1 point, which is a kind of left of the earth.

F

As you can see in that image, yep wolf: um it's going to be able to examine all the way to the outer edges of the solar system and it's going to be trying to examine three different types of phenomena to satisfy the goals of its program and we'll be exact going over exactly what these goals are.

F

So next slide. Yep. The first of these objectives um is the study, the interaction between the sun's magnetic field and the local interstellar medium. So what does this mean? uh Wolf already does discuss the sun's magnetic field, but to quickly summarize it's thanks to the complex mixing of charged particles in the sun.

F

A massive like system spanning magnetic fields produced so just as we talked about the earth's magnetic field is very stable but very confined, whereas the sun's is much much more powerful and we can see kind of the effects it can have here near these outer edges of the solar system.

F

So it serves a number of purposes, but one critical role, plagially is protecting us from galactic cosmic rays. So you get. You know how the sun's the earth's magnetic field kind of protects us from kind of emissions from sun.

F

Similarly, these galactic cosmic rays, which are basically subatomic particles, accelerate to almost like light speeds by distant supernova explosions, so very, very dangerous stuff, besides mag field.

F

Similarly, to our magnetic field is able to deflect particles and protects us from a majority of them, and so what we want to see is that how it does this process, so these particles can be highly dead, highly deadly to our astronauts and satellites that we have in space, but thankfully the sun's there, and so we want to understand this process, and so with the imap probe, we'll be able to examine this file in the system.

F

Kind of understand this region, which is the heliosphere which you can see, is the kind of that separation between the termination shock and the heliopause.

F

So it's that nice like bright uh like flaring surface, so it like stretches back behind the solar system as well, and so we will just further study this and better understand this process, deflection and kind of drew. This better understand exactly how the radiation composition of our inner solar system was able to develop thanks to this deflection from the sun's magnetic field.

F

The second goal of the program. So this is a big part, but it's also related to the heliosphere and that's discussing the interaction between the solar wind of the sun and the local interstellar medium, so same area, however different emission from the sun. So again, the solar wind is a continuous flow of particles from the sun, so where solar flares are kind of explosive releases of energy.

F

This is kind of like continuous emission and now what's interesting about these solar winds at these outer bounds of solar system is that we find that these, so the solar winds may have protons, most importantly, hydrogen atoms, and when they go this far on the source system, they begin gaining and losing electrons repeatedly, and if they do in the right place at the right time, they can actually be emitted back into the solar system and so some nasa missions before such as the ibex program, which isn't terribly relevant. It's a satellite.

F

Similarly, however, they recently discovered this how they want the capabilities to really further pursue the topic of how this process occurs and with this 10 array, number of instruments, the imap probe, can carry they'll, be able to examine this process similar to the sun's magnetic field and that interaction kind of bringing light to a under research field that scientists are really interested in and the final goal of the program would be to study the particles being emitted by the sun.

F

So these particles are of particular interest because they can again similar to galactic cosmic rays, endanger astronauts and satellite equipment we have.

F

But with this high importance, scientists are obviously eager to study the mission of these particles in depth, and for it is this. Imap probe carries specialized equipment to help us understand exactly how these particles originate from the sun.

F

It's not exactly contributing to a novel field like the local interstellar, medium with the sun's magnetic field and the solar wind. However, it's a welcome addition to the current equipment already out there, and the scientific community greatly appreciates the further opportunity for research.

F

So that's pretty much it so. The imap probe it's pretty exciting and overall, it's going to be exploring the heavily under-researched fields of the interaction between the local interstellar, medium and the sun's magnetic field and solar wind, along with providing useful information for particles being emitted by the sun in these solar winds. um Overall, it's a very uh promising new tool for future heliophysics research, which could be wouldn't be surprised if uh ends up getting some really cool discoveries about these interesting interactions that we have in the outer bounds of the solar system.

F

Yep, that's pretty much! It.

A

When do we expect to start getting data on this thing? When will we expect results.

F

It's planned to be launched in 2024. However, I mean you know nasa it's kind of the postponed a lot. You know. James webb telescope is a famous example of that, um but I think there's around like a couple months. Testing phase, but I would guess based off just past experience like 2026, is going to be really really really kind of getting all that data that needs and kayaking after that period of some debt collecting. We begin to get some really cool discoveries.

F

Thanks to this probe.

A

Yeah yeah astronomy.

F

A

Not a good science for the impatient right, because uh even with nancy's story right, you know we launched the probe and it's a 10-year mission right, and it takes a long time for the probe to do all its orbits to do the flybys of the sun. So yeah, you know if you're impatient. This is not a good science for you.

A

On the other hand, you know with that patience we often get a good payoff right like like huge new detail about the campfires, for example right and I'm sure there are things that we have not even seen yet that you know the solar orbiter that nancy talked about, and then this mission here imap right will reveal. So this is really cool, really cool stuff. To look forward to all right thanks, edward.

C

Yeah I mean in in in simple terms, I think emory you know you also talked about is all that solar wind and that energy sort of creating this electromagnetic force field right and and the outer limits of our solar system, that sort of that's protecting us and then these missions are pretty much. You know to find out the the inner workings of how a lot of this energy, how it's going out, how it's hitting the boundaries? uh What is it protecting us from uh protecting?

C

You know for future protection for our astronauts and our equipment and and additional research that'll come with it as we start looking at increasing our boundaries once we get to mars and we get further on, I mean there's so much more that human race is going to accomplish. So all the science is going to feed into it.

F

Exactly one interesting I didn't mention was with this research about the heliosphere they'll be able to actually better understand, composition, and so actually the voyager, 1 and 2 probes are just now beginning to enter this area, and so we're better able to understand how these uh areas are kind of constructed. Then we can perhaps like kind of better understand how the voyager probes will fare in these areas and perhaps protect them and continue our mission on.

A

Right and the voyager probes just for context right. These are spacecraft we launched in the shoot in the 60s. I guess right. I forgot the exact years now but yeah again, this is not for the patient for the inpatient right. um You know we launched the voyager probes, yeah 50, god shoot no. What 60 years ago and uh uh you know they've been they did a great job, exploring the planets way back when but they've been traveling towards the you know outside right. You know away from the sun since then and they're now.

A

Finally, you know recently, I think one or maybe both have just crossed that boundary of the heliopause and solar system, but they're right in that neighborhood yeah.

C

Yeah voyager 1 launch date was september 5th, 1977.

A

77 sorry, thank you. Okay, see bad updates, thanks for rescuing me,.

C

A

C

2 was also 1977, but that was august 20th cool. Thank you.

A

All right, very good, thank you, so uh yeah final view from the backyard. So I think, like I said earlier, you know we run into the tree so there it is so now you get to see the sun as it's either obscured by a giant, alien spacecraft right or by leaves from my tree, you can guess which one is more likely, but, okay. I think that pretty much wraps up our chat today. So I really appreciate uh you know: everybody's participation. Are there any final questions?

A

Is there anything in the chat that people have thrown at us that we should address.

C

I I can help you with the solar view.

A

Oh, thank you yep, okay, can you please demonstrate differential rotation.

A

A

Okay looks like there are no final questions as far as I can tell.

C

A

All right, okay! Well, then, we'll wrap it up for today. So just a reminder: we're the san jose astronomical association. We do lots of stuff, not just the solar events. For example. Next weekend we will have a science talk. Actually, emory is the presenter, so emery will speak about binary stars next saturday evening and then the following weekend um on the friday, the 14th I'm doing a general introduction to astronomy.

A

I call sites of the cosmos and then the saturday, the 15th we have an armchair star party, that's our online version of a nighttime star party and that's quite a production, so go check that out. All these things are listed on meetup and again, you know if you like what we do, you'd like to become a bigger part, consider spending that pizza, money on sj membership and also you know if you're interested in helping out and learning and promoting astronomy and science in general.

A

We can use your help in fact that that's how lipika and emory got here, for example right, so we can use help in technical and non-technical areas. Don't worry if you don't feel ready. We can help. You get going just contact us, you know, ask sj, which is a general account or you can reach me at solar and uh yeah, say hi, and if you want to work with sja to do what we do that'll be awesome, and uh with that, I'm just curious.

A

If you want to give us some feedback in the chat, I'd be curious to find out if you found anything in particular, most interesting or most surprising, you know do tell me about that and in general, if you just have feedback about how we can do better I'd appreciate it. So thanks um thanks for visiting that's streaming solar sunday for today. I appreciate your time with us and uh yeah have a good rest of the sunday bye. Everybody.

B