Oct 14, 2008

Sun Caught Live on Camera

Stela Depicting the Aten Giving Life and Prosperity to Amenophis IV His Wife

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Splendid You rise in the lightland of the sky,
O living Aten, creator of life!
You have dawned in the eastern lightland.
You fill every land with your beauty.


from Great Hymn to the Aten


Hat tip to the The Huffington Post, a NASA pictorial, of the sun in active periods, with solar flares and winds. The sun is currently experiencing an unusually quite phase.

The Sun is now in the quietest phase of its 11-year activity cycle, the solar minimum - in fact, it has been unusually quiet this year - with over 200 days so far with no observed sunspots. The solar wind has also dropped to its lowest levels in 50 years. Scientists are unsure of the significance of this unusual calm, but are continually monitoring our closest star with an array of telescopes and satellites.

I can't speak to the significance either, but these pics are stunning. (One note of caution. If you want to look at the whole, magnificent pictorial in The Boston Globe, it may take some time to load the giant, bandwidth intensive images. It's worth it.)











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