Our Magnificent Sun

While web surfing, I came across The Atlantic website and in particular " In Focus with Alan Taylor."  In Focus is The Atlantic's news photography blog. Several times a week, Taylor posts entries featuring collections of images that tell a story. His goal is to use photography to do the kind of high-impact journalism readers have come to expect on other pages of this site.  He has an amazing article entitled "A Trip Around Our Solar System" published in May 2011. 
Taylor enlightens us:  Robotic probes launched by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and others are gathering information for us right now all across the solar system. We currently have spacecraft in orbit around the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Saturn; several others on their way to smaller bodies; and a few on their way out of the solar system entirely. On Mars, a rover called Spirit has just been officially left for dead, after two years of radio silence from it -- but its twin, Opportunity, continues on its mission, now more than 2,500 days beyond its originally planned 90-days. With all these eyes in the sky, I'd like to take the opportunity to put together a photo album of our Solar system -- a set of family portraits, of sorts -- as seen by our astronauts and mechanical emissaries. [38 photos]

On October 28, 2010, astronauts aboard the ISS gazed down on the Earth at night and captured this scene, with Brussels, Paris, and Milan brightly lit. (NASA).

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) satellite captures an image of the Earth's moon crossing in front of the Sun, on May 3, 2011. (NASA/GSFC/SDO)

When a rather large-sized (M 3.6 class) flare occurred near the edge of the Sun, it blew out a gorgeous, waving mass of erupting plasma that swirled and twisted over a 90-minute period on February 24, 2011. This event was captured in extreme ultraviolet light by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft . Some of the material blew out into space and other portions fell back to the surface. (NASA/GSFC/SDO).  If you get a chance to check out the website, this photo is part of a short video clip showing the flare.  Hot stuff. 

 

A closeup of the solar surface. Part of the largest sunspot in Active Region 10030 recorded on July 15, 2002, with the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope on La Palma. The width of the cells near the top of the image are roughly 1,000 km. The central part of the sunspot ("the umbra") looks dark because the strong magnetic fields there stop upwelling hot gas from the solar interior. The thread-like structures surrounding the umbra make up the penumbra. Dark cores are clearly visible in some of the bright penumbral filaments that stick out into the umbra. (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences)

I have been fascinated with outer space for as long as I can remember.  I love exploring into the night sky to see the universe in motion.  Maybe spy a UFO?  You never know.