3/16/2024 0 Comments Seventeen exact date of debut![]() They’ll also test a new theory that coronal loops – giant arches often seen in close-up images of the Sun – aren’t what they appear to be. They are identifying active regions, the magnetically complex regions underlying sunspots, hoping to uncover 3D information about their structure usually lost in 2D images. STEREO scientists are using the opportunity to make much-needed measurements. It’s as if scientists were adjusting the focus on a several million-mile-wide telescope. Better yet, STEREO-A’s distance from Earth changes throughout the flyby, optimizing its stereo vision for different sized solar features at different times. STEREO-A will enable such 3D viewing by synthesizing its views with NASA’s and the European Space Agency’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Your brain compares the images from each eye, and the slight differences between those images reveal which objects are closer or farther away. It’s how two eyeballs, looking out at the world from offset locations, create depth perception. Stereoscopic vision allows us to extract 3D information from two-dimensional, or flat, images. A 3D View of the Sunĭuring the Earth flyby, STEREO-A will once again do something it used to do with its twin in the early years: combine views to achieve stereoscopic vision. In the few weeks before and after STEREO-A’s flyby, scientists are seizing the opportunity to ask questions normally beyond the mission’s reach. 12, 2023, STEREO-A’s lead on Earth has grown to one full revolution as the spacecraft “laps” us in our orbit around the Sun. ![]() However, STEREO-A continues its journey, capturing solar views unavailable from Earth. The mission accomplished many other scientific feats over the years, and researchers studied both spacecraft views until 2014, when mission control lost contact with STEREO-B after a planned reset. “STEREO broke that tether and gave us a view of the Sun as a three-dimensional object.” “Prior to that we were ‘tethered’ to the Sun-Earth line – we only saw one side of the Sun at a time,” said Lika Guhathakurta, STEREO program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. For the first time, humanity saw our Sun as a complete sphere. ![]() 6, 2011, the mission achieved another landmark: STEREO-A and -B reached a 180-degree separation in their orbits. STEREO-A (for “Ahead”) advanced its lead on Earth as STEREO-B (for “Behind”) lagged behind, both charting Earth-like orbits around the Sun.ĭuring the first years after launch, the dual-spacecraft mission achieved its landmark goal: providing the first stereoscopic, or multiple-perspective, view of our closest star. 25, 2006, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The twin STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) spacecraft launched on Oct. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Scientific Visualization Studio/Tom Bridgman
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