APOD: Sunspot Group 1429 and the Distant Sun (2012 Mar 19)

[APOD Robot]

Sunspot Group 1429 and the Distant Sun

Explanation: What's that on the Sun? Over the past two weeks, one of the most energetic sunspot regions of recent years crossed the face of the Sun. Active Region 1429, visible above as the group of dark spots on the Sun's upper right, blasted out several solar flares and coronal mass ejections since coming around the edge of the Sun almost a month ago. Fast moving particles from these solar explosions have impacted the Earth and been responsible for many colorful auroras seen over the past two weeks. The picturesque foreground features trees and birds near Merida, Spain, where the above image was taken about a week ago. Although AR 1429 has continued to rotate to the right and gone around the limb of the Sun -- as seen from the Earth -- monitoring of the region will be continued by one of the STEREO satellites, however, which is orbiting the Sun well ahead of the Earth.

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[Ann]

The Sun is doing a fine imitation of Jupiter, thanks to layered clouds in the Earth's atmosphere. I like it.

Ann

[Beyond]

Oh-oh, i've been staring at the sun too long. I'm seeing spots.

[revloren]

Awesome shot! Thanx APOD

Probably no way to tell if it is sunrise or sunset. Unless there are other shots that show movement to the right or left.

[Julie]

another awesome pic!

[Chris Peterson]

Probably no way to tell if it is sunrise or sunset.

This sunspot group was in the Sun's northern hemisphere, which is generally to the left at sunrise, and the right at sunset. So this must be a sunset picture. And that is consistent with the EXIF information in the image, which has a time stamp of 2012-03-07 19:11:32.

[ta152h0]

This is nice ! If this is a lucky shot i want this person to buy me a lottery ticket. Jupiter....errrrr the Sun is perfect !

[Anthony Barreiro]

Beautiful photo! I've only recently started observing the Sun through white-light filters. Until reading Chris's comment, I hadn't thought about the changing orientation of the Sun in the sky over the course of a day -- just like the changing orientation of the full Moon over the course of a night! Very cool ... or hot ... .

[Sandstone]

Here is a listing of the daily SRS (solar region summary) data for AR1429 from first to last appearance, from
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpmenu/forecasts/SRS.html

Sorry about the formatting, but I can't get this to line up right with the columns.
Columns are: Date, Active region number (1429), location, Carrington system longitude, Area, McIntosh classification, length of group in degrees, number of spots in group, and magnetic type

Date Nmbr Location Lo Area Z LL NN Mag Type
March 04: 1429 N18E68 299 0290 Dkc 06 04 Beta-Gamma
March 05: 1429 N18E55 300 0700 Dkc 08 08 Beta-Gamma-Delta
March 06: 1429 N17E41 300 0770 Dkc 09 20 Beta-Delta
March 07: 1429 N17E29 298 1120 Dkc 09 25 Beta-Gamma-Delta
March 08: 1429 N17E15 299 1270 Dkc 10 28 Beta-Gamma-Delta
March 09: 1429 N17E01 301 0950 Ekc 12 28 Beta-Gamma-Delta
March 10: 1429 N18W13 302 0900 Ekc 13 21 Beta-Gamma-Delta
March 11: 1429 N18W26 302 0880 Ekc 13 22 Beta-Gamma-Delta
March 12: 1429 N18W38 301 0840 Ekc 13 22 Beta-Gamma-Delta
March 13: 1429 N18W50 299 0380 Ekc 12 14 Beta-Gamma
March 14: 1429 N18W62 299 0410 Ekc 12 12 Beta-Gamma
March 15: 1429 N19W77 300 0320 Eki 13 06 Beta
March 16: 1429 N19W85 295 0090 Dso 04 03 Beta

Note particularly the progression of area, reaching a peak of 1270 on March 8th (units are millionths of sun's visible hemisphere), and also that it recorded a very complex magnetic type of Beta-Gamma-Delta or Beta-Delta for 8 days. It remained fairly compact, never getting an F on the McIntosh scale (maxing out at 13 degrees), and as best I recall not being as large as last September's AR1302. I can't find numbers for AR1302, though, anyone have them?

[lazy_ant]

The sunspot group only "rotates to the right" if you are viewing it from the Northern Hemisphere. From the Southern Hemisphere, the north pole of the Sun is the one that is closer to the horizon. The Sun's south pole is pointing toward the celestial South Pole, somewhere overhead. Features on the Sun therefore appear to rotate right-to-left as viewed from this "upside down" vantage point.

Alternatively, one can say that solar features rotate east-to-west. That works in both hemispheres, and it is the usual terminology in solar astronomy. Unfortunately, even the standard terminology causes problems, because "east" and "west" refer to Earth's east and Earth's west. With reference to the Sun itself, of course, all solar features rotate from the Sun's west to the Sun's east!

[Rothkko]

Gracias Lazy_ant, Sandstone, Anthony Barreiro, Wolf Kotenberg, Chris Peterson, Julie, revloren, Beyond, Ann y Apod Robot. Saludos.

[benkc]

Yeah, I was confused that the description says that the sunspots rotated off to the right, when that direction is down in the image.

[DavidLeodis]

Probably no way to tell if it is sunrise or sunset.

This sunspot group was in the Sun's northern hemisphere, which is generally to the left at sunrise, and the right at sunset. So this must be a sunset picture. And that is consistent with the EXIF information in the image, which has a time stamp of 2012-03-07 19:11:32.

Hi Chris.

I would like to know how you manage to get that EXIF information. I can get the image URL from the Properties on right clicking the image and then enter that URL into Jeffrey's EXIF viewer.That however only gives me some very basic information that does not include such as the date the image was taken. I assume that is because the URL is that for the APOD, not the original URL. I've tried Jeffrey's in IE and Firefox but neither gave me anything more than the very basic information. I like to know when an APOD was taken but that is often not given even by the photographer if there is a link to the image in the photographers website or an image hosting service. I would appreciate it if you could please let me know how you manage to get the more detailed EXIF information.

[Chris Peterson]

Hi Chris.

I would like to know how you manage to get that EXIF information. I can get the image URL from the Properties on right clicking the image and then enter that URL into Jeffrey's EXIF viewer.That however only gives me some very basic information that does not include such as the date the image was taken. I assume that is because the URL is that for the APOD, not the original URL. I've tried Jeffrey's in IE and Firefox but neither gave me anything more than the very basic information. I like to know when an APOD was taken but that is often not given even by the photographer if there is a link to the image in the photographers website or an image hosting service. I would appreciate it if you could please let me know how you manage to get the more detailed EXIF information.

I normally do it by saving the image and opening it in my image viewer, which will display EXIF headers. I've never heard of Jeffrey's EXIF viewer, but I just tried it with the APOD in question and it shows me all of the data, not just the basic stuff. I suspect you just checked the image displayed on the APOD page, which as usual is a processed and reduced version of the original image, obtained by clicking on the APOD page image itself. If you pass Jeffrey's that image you should get more info.

Of course, this only works when the author leaves the EXIF data intact. I normally strip it from all the images I post, and lots of others do so as well.

[DavidLeodis]

Thanks for your help Chris, which is appreciated.

I never knew that if the APOD image was saved that I could then get a different URL to that directly found from the APOD. On saving the image I found its URL is
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1203/bi ... o_5184.jpg which only differs from that directly found in the AOPD URL in that the 5184 is 960 in the direct APOD URL. On entering the saved image URL into Jeffrey's EXIF viewer I then got the full EXIF details that I could not get using the direct APOD URL.

Cheers Chris, as I've learnt something new.

[owlice]

David, many APOD images are reduced for good display on the APOD page. If you click on the image on an APOD page, many times you get a much larger image.

[Rothkko]

Antes de empezar la entrevista para una televisión local me pregunta la periodista por el nombre de APOD: "no tiene" le contesté. Explicando la captura: "No creía lo que veía a través del visor. Era como una w en vertical, como Casiopea". Ya tiene nombre.

Y Anthony: utilicé un filtro ND 1.8

Before starting the interview for a local television I asks the journalist by the name of the APOD: 'do not have'. I replied. Explaining the capture:'Do not believe what I saw through the viewfinder. It was like a vertical w, as Cassiopeia.' I have a name.

And Anthony: I used a 1.8 ND filter