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The Sun’s great idea

Forecasters say solar maximum is still a year away. Earlier this month sky watchers got a taste of things to come when a powerful flare sparked Northern Lights over the United States as far south as Arkansas, Colorado and California.

The AIRS images for June 29 show the crescent shape of the initial stage of the derecho as it gathered strength on the Michigan-Indiana-Ohio border and began its rapid eastward movement. The infrared image shows the high near-surface atmospheric temperatures blanketing the South and Midwest United States, approaching 98 F.

Hubble captured a crowd of stars that looks rather like a stadium darkened before a show, lit only by the flashes of the audience’s cameras.

Atomic force microscopy images of artificial ion channels created by scientists. The images are of the same sample, with increasing magnification.

Silicon wafer with radiation damage.

Electronic Medical Records

This image was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) on July 19, 2012 of an M7.7 class solar flare. The image represents light in the 131 Angstrom wavelength, which is particularly good for seeing flares, and which is typically colorized in teal.

A stunning image showing Aurora Australis – the Southern Lights – glowing over Concordia station in the Antarctic, one of the remotest places on Earth, on 18 July 2012. It was taken by ESA-sponsored scientist Alexander Kumar and his colleague Erick Bondoux from about 1 km from the station, located in the Antarctic at 75°S latitude.

Left: This image was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) on June 19, 2010, the image shows the area in the wavelength of 171 Angstroms, which has here been colorized in yellow. Credit: NASA/SDO
Right: This visualization, based on the image on the left, uses specific colors to describe which areas on the sun cooled or heated over a 12-hour period. The use of reds and yellows imply that higher temperatures dominated earlier in the time period, while lower temperatures dominated later, meaning that the area showed steady cooling over time, but any heating happened too quickly and impulsively to be measured. The image compares wavelength 211 (which shows material in the 2 million K range) to wavelength 171 (which shows material about ten times cooler).