Jewel Box Sun, seeing the sun through different lights

December 19, 2013 7:24 PM

"This video of the sun based on data from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, shows the wide range of wavelengths -- invisible to the naked eye -- that the telescope can view. SDO converts the wavelengths into an image humans can see, and the light is colorized into a rainbow of colors." And because it's NASA, you can download the video in various formats.
posted by filthy light thief (9 comments total)

My god that's beautiful.
posted by figurant at 7:49 PM on December 19, 2013 [2 favorites]

I mental image of the sun is still a fairly homogeneous ball. That means that each new ever-more-detailed picture that NASA delivers just make my jaw drop further and further towards the ground.
posted by benito.strauss at 8:04 PM on December 19, 2013

I just learned that if you change "youtube.com" in the video URL to "youtubeslow.com" (and remove the "https" at the beginning, because the site apparently doesn't have a valid certificate), you can choose how slow to play any YouTube video. It worked great on the first link of the post, to give me a chance to more leisurely examine what was in each wedge before the next one breezed through.

The site acts as if it works by, essentially, manically clicking the Play/Pause button for you dozens of times per second. Moving the slider to the right just a bit, to 1.5 or 2, seemed to be plenty in this case. Also, you'll want to turn the video's volume down because the sound is choppy same as the playback. I dunno, put on some Vivaldi or "Dark Side of the Moon" or something instead.

This is probably a well-known thing by everyone but me already, but I thought I'd mention it just in case...
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:23 PM on December 19, 2013 [2 favorites]

Nope, yours is the first reference to the site! Great find!
posted by filthy light thief at 8:47 PM on December 19, 2013

This is so gorgeous. I wish we had an app that let you watch the movie with your choice of frequencies applied to the image as a whole, so you could scrub an aperture right and left and see how (e.g.) sun spots change.
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:52 PM on December 19, 2013

No wonder people worship the sun.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:34 AM on December 20, 2013 [1 favorite]

Man, I don't know about you folks, but I just KNOW that something is out there.
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 12:39 PM on December 20, 2013

Praise the Sun!

I like seeing the different spectra on that first video. Some times I wonder what things REALLY look like since I know what we see is just one "slice" of visibility. I like to imagine that some creature than can see in other spectra is looking at me in front of my pc. Maybe its vision makes everything look like sand art or something.
posted by Our Ship Of The Imagination! at 1:34 PM on December 20, 2013

I for one welcome our Jewelbox Sun overlord and will light a candle for it's solstice tomorrow at 12:11 PM EST.
posted by Gadgetenvy at 8:20 PM on December 20, 2013