The Sun Right Now!

These images were taken recently (See the time stamps below) by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), a NASA mission launched in 2010. Each color is representative of the intensity recorded when observing one particular wavelength of ultraviolet light. These wavelengths were selected by the SDO mission because they correspond to particular atomic ions which are known to exist at a range of temperatures. This means we can use these images to determine the temperature of the solar atmosphere. The wavelength of each image is printed on the top right of each image (in units of angstroms, which are 1/10th of a nanometer). Find out more about SDO on wikipedia!

The images have been radially normalized using Radial Histogram Equalization (RHE) (Gilly & Cranmer 2024, in prep) to maximize the dynamic range of the image. The unprocessed images can be seen at The Sun Today.

These images are from: