The Sun
Posted by Michael Hiteshew on May 9th, 2016 (All posts by Michael Hiteshew)
From NASA TV, here’s an image of Mercury transiting the sun today:
Mercury Transit
That image gives a good feel for the scale of the planets versus the sun. Earth would appear a little more than twice that size. Here’s an amazing 4k time lapse video of the sun in various ultraviolet wavelengths. Based on the scale of Mercury in the image above, pick out a small feature in this video and consider the entire Earth would probably fit inside it. Then by comparison, consider the scale and the energies of the loops and streams and mass ejections in this video.
The video is even more amazing just left running in full screen on an HD monitor . It’s completely mesmerizing.
May 9th, 2016 at 1:29 pm
The solar minimum appears to be in full swing