On Friday this week, NASA/Goddard filmmakers, writers, and animators will screen what they consider their best work of 2011. It’s called the Best of Goddard Film Festival, and it’s held every year about this time for Goddard employees. (For employees, the festival will run from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm in the Goett Auditorium, Building 3.)
Even if you are “outside the Center” and can’t be here with us, you can still watch and enjoy the entries to the festival that are available on YouTube on the NASA Explorer channel. They’ll run in groups this week on the blog.
Massive Solar Eruption Close-up
Animator:Tom Bridgman (GST)
Video Editor:Scott Wiessinger (USRA)
Producer:Scott Wiessinger (USRA)
Lunar Eclipse Essentials
Animators:Chris Smith (HTSI) Ernie Wright (USRA)
Video Editor:Chris Smith (HTSI)
Narrator:Chris Smith (HTSI)
Producer:Chris Smith (HTSI)
Scientist:Richard Vondrak (NASA/GSFC)
Writer:Chris Smith (HTSI)
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
New interactive visualization tools developed by the NASA/European Space Agency (ESA) Helioviewer Project allow scientists and the general public to explore images captured by solar observing spacecraft. Previous posts explained the origins and aims of the Helioviewer Project, and the basics of a Web-based app called Helioviewer.org. This post takes a closer look at a downloadable software application JHelioviewer.
The Web app Helioviewer.org allows you to dip your toes into the water of solar image visualization. JHelioviewer, a piece of software you install on your computer, is a dive into the deep end. It gives you powerful additional tools to create vivid images and time-lapse videos.
When you install and start JHelioviewer, it displays a time-lapse video of the most recent 24-hour set of images available from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) at 171 Angstroms. (Read this previous post to learn more about the AIA 171 Angstrom channel on SDO.)
Here are the basic menus along the left of the JHelioviewer desktop. Guidance is also available on the JHelioviewer Wiki Handbook.
Overview
In the Overview menu area (top left), use the yellow frame with the little “Bull’s eye” to target the area of the image you want to work with. If you have a thumb wheel on your mouse, use it to expand or contract the size of the frame. Or use the Zoom in and Zoom out buttons on the top navigation bar.
One of the coolest tools in JHelioviewer is Feature tracking. Center the yellow Bull’s eye on a feature and click the Track icon on the top-navigation bar. When you make a time-lapse video, it will hold the targeted feature steady as the rest of the sun moves around it! The software compensates for the rotation of the sun.
This can be especially dramatic if you zoom in close to a feature, like a tangle of magnetic loops, and switch on Track. The feature stays right in the center of the viewer as you watch the magnetic loops dance.
Movie Controls
With the More Options tab selected, you can adjust the per-second cadence of your video sequence. The higher the rate, the smoother the video.
Also, there are three play modes: play once and stop; loop forward; or play forward and then backward.
Layers
These controls allow you to create sets of solar images to examine, alter, and render into videos. Clicking Add Layer brings up a panel for choosing the start and stop dates, the observatory, the instrument, and the time step between images. The time settings are in UTC (coordinated universal time), which is the same as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). UTC minus 5 hours gives you Eastern Standard Time.
If you, for example, want to make a video of the past day of solar activity, choose a 24-hour start and stop interval. Now you have to choose the Time Step. Once per hour will make a pretty jumpy video.
So, say you pick the other extreme — once per minute. Unfortunately, you can’t do it, because the system limits you to sets of no more than 1000 images at a time, and there are 1,440 minutes in a day. How about every 10 minutes? Set the Time Step to 2 minutes and you will get 144 images to cover the 24-hour period.
Adjustments
The video you create initially may already look pretty good. But you can use the Adjustments tools to tweak the look of the video and highlight details. Sharpen compensates for fuzziness. Gamma brightens the image. And Contrast increases the differences between bright and dark areas.
Another cool feature: You can make these changes “on the fly,” as your video continues to play. You can also switch AIA instruments on the fly, and frame rate, too, to get the perfect video.
HEK Events
Turning on this feature adds a layer of labels drawn from the Heliophysics Events Knowledgebase. It labels flares, for example, with a special icon. Clicking on an icon makes a window pop up with detailed technical information about the event.
HEK events
Cool stuff in JHelioviewer
You can create multiple layers and adjust the relative contribution of each using the Opacity control. Layers chosen from the same time period will play in synch.
Another cool feature: Notice in the Layers panel how you can watch the minutes, hours, days, etc. progress as the video plays. I made a 1-year video to browse for times of the year when the sun was especially active, then went back to those periods to grab still images.
For example, set the time to October 7, 2010, and make a video of that day. Do you see a big dark circle cross in front of the sun? That was the moon during a lunar transit.
JHelioviewer does not, like the Web app Helioviewer.org, allow you to instantly share your video to YouTube. But you can download it as an mp4 file (File>Export Movie), and post it manually on your blog, YouTube channel, or other sharing sites.
But watch out for the file size! My 1-year video at 12-hour time steps (627 SDO images) came in at a file size of 127 Mb. To generate a smaller output file, make the “frame size” smaller in the Export dialog settings.
Here is the video I made with JHelioviewer of a year in the life of our star, May 2010 to May 2011. You can do it, too.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION? All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
Phil Evans, an X-ray astronomer in England and frequent guest blogger for Geeked On Goddard, sends us this report on the partial solar eclipse this morning. The video above consists of 50 still shots taken by Phil over a 15-minute period. The music is Mars, Bringer of War, by Gustav Holst, brought to you in its copyright-free glory by the U.S. Air Force Band. Being a Brit and an astronomer is often no fun. The clouds know when something interesting is happening, or you’ve bought a new piece of equipment. Almost every lunar eclipse I’ve tried to watch has been clear until the moon was about 30% covered, and then I was clouded out until the moon was about 30% covered on the way out of eclipse.
So it was with extreme pessimism that I began my first working day of 2011 by trudging my way up to the 5th floor of a tall campus buiding, carrying my brand-new Canon EOS 500D (a Christmas present plus my savings!). Sure enough, as the sky began to glow, two large, banks of cloud were illuminated near the horizon. Typical!
Or not.
Actually, there were two small, sun-size gaps: one between the horizon and the first bank, and one between the two banks. As the Sun rose (surprisingly quickly) we were treated to a fantastic view of the crescent Sun above the trees, distorted by the atmosphere, and actually accentuated by the clouds. They added depth, colour and an extra sense of anticipation as the Sun, rather than baring all, made use of the available cover to dance suggestively, keeping us on the edge of our seats.
108 photos later and the cloud had taken over. But was it worth the climb up 5 floors at 8 a.m.? You bet it was. Nice one, Universe.
— Phil Evans
Follow Phil on Twitter to get updates on hius life and work in X-ray astronomy.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION?All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
On October 7, 2010, the moon passed between NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and its target. And SDO saw the equivalent of a partial solar eclipse — from space. The SDO “Pick of the Week” write-up below provides additional details. Watch the incredible video to see the dark shadow of the moon chug across the surface of our sun.
This was a first for SDO and it was visually engaging too. On October 7, 2010, SDO observed its first lunar transit when the new Moon passed directly between the spacecraft (in its geosynchronous orbit) and the Sun. With SDO watching the Sun in a wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light, the dark Moon created a partial eclipse of the Sun.
These images, while unusual and cool to see, have practical value to the SDO science team. Karel Schrijver of Lockheed-Martin’s Solar and Astrophysics Lab explains: “The very sharp edge of the lunar limb allows us to measure the in-orbit characteristics of the telescope e.g., light diffraction on optics and filter support grids. Once these are characterized, we can use that information to correct our data for instrumental effects and sharpen up the images to even more detail.”
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION?All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center. And while we’re at it, links to websites posted on this blog do not imply endorsement of those websites by NASA.
MONDAY JULY 12:Washington Post weather blogger Andrew Freedman writes about a recent glacier retreat in NASA eyeballs glacial melt in Greenland. . . . NASA Earth science storyteller Mike Carlowicz explained the science last week.
AWESOMENESS: NASA Blueshift‘s Weekly Awesomeness Roundup covers Hubble fireworks, renegade planets, a mind-blowing physics experiment in Germany, and other USDA Choice Scientific Beef of the week.
MARS ROCKS! Goddard’s Sciences and Exploration Directorate Chief Scientist James Garvin gives you a guided tour of Martian geology on WorldWideTelescope. Here’s the article in The Universe Today.
THREE’S A CHARM: On this day in 1961, NASA launched the Tiros 3 satellite. . . In 1960, Tiros 1 had taken the first-ever image of Earth from orbit. . . . Tiros stands for Television and InfraRed Observation Satellite, designed to test experimental television techniques and infrared equipment.
TUESDAY JULY 13: What, ANOTHER fabulous Hubble Space Telescope image of a cosmic star factory? This one’s in the constellation Puppis, the poop deck of Jason’s fabled ship Argo from Greek mythology.
GRAB A SHOVEL: In today’s Systems Engineering Seminar, Warren Mitchell, Syed Hasan, and Jason Laing of the Goddard Flight Dynamics Facility recalled the drama of supporting the Space Shuttle Endeavour (STS-130) mission and the launch and operation of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) during the worst snowstorm in memory. Rani Gran’s account of Goddard’s Snowpocalyse adventure provides details.
WEDNESDAY JULY 14: NASA’s Swift observatory is temporarily blinded by the X–ray flash triggered by the explosion of a massive star morphing into a new black hole. . . . ME TOO! Gogblog profiles Phil Evans, the British investigator who uncovered the X-ray flash. . . . FAST WORK: PSU and gogblog post the story 10:58 am; Science NOW posts a “ScienceShot” news brief at 4:24 pm by astro-writer extraordinaire Ken Croswell. . . . LISTEN: “How a bright star fooled a top observatory into thinking it was unreal,” according to BBC Five Live presenter Dotun Adebayo. BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE: The University of Leicester, where Phil Evans works, posts its own release on the blinding blast.
RED PLANET RENDEZVOUS: Forty-five years ago today, the Mariner 4 space probe flew within 6,118 miles of Mars after an 8-month journey. . . . MARINER 4 was the first spacecraft to take close-up pictures of another planet.
NEW TREND: Goddard Tech Trends releases its summer issue, featuring blacker-than-black nanotechnology and other innovations brewing at Goddard.
SUPER-HUBBLE: Is it a planet? Is it a comet? No — it’s . . . . ANOTHER mind-numbingly interesting Hubble Space Telescope exoplanet discovery!
ORDER UP: According to a report in eWeek.com, Dell Inc. will sell Goddard’s NASA Center for Climate Simulation souped-up servers in a contract worth up to $5.1 million dollars . . . . The new servers will double NCCS’s computational capacity to more than 300 trillion calculations per second.
RUN THAT BY ME AGAIN: “The extreme tail loading and unloading observed at Mercury implies that the relative intensity of substorms must be much larger than at Earth.” Find out what Goddard space physicist James A. Slavin is talking about in a web feature about recent discoveries by the MESSENGER spacecraft.
ECLIPSE PORTRAIT: Like most earthlings, you probably didn’t make it to Easter Island to see the solar eclipse on Sunday July 11. But here’s something you would not have been able to see even from Easter Island: a combined space-and-surface view of the eclipse, created by Goddard media specialist and sun worshipper Steele Hill.
PLANKTON ON PARADE: The What On Earth blog posts the last of four dispatches from guest writer Karen Romano Young on the ICESCAPE expedition, “Plankton On Parade.”
man on the moon
FRIDAY JULY 16: Today in 1969, Apollo 11blasted off at 09:32:00 am EDT from Launch Complex 39-A Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the first manned landing on the moon.
WoE OF THE WEEK:The What On Earth bloggers post the latest NASA Earth Buzz, with the top recent Earth science stories and the answer to the “What on Earth is THAT?” image quiz from last week. . . . ANSWER: soot particles from a wildfire.
WARM DATA: NASA’s Earth Observatory posts a global temperature anomaly map comparing readings for July 4–11, 2010, to the same dates from 2000 to 2008. Land surface temps come courtesy of the MODIS instrument aboard NASA’s Terra satellite.
HOT LINKS: The Physics Today website offers a feature story about NASA’s A-Train of satellites, Touring the atmosphere aboard the A-Train, by Tristan S. L’Ecuyer and Jonathan H. Jiang. “A convoy of satellites orbiting Earth measures cloud properties, greenhouse gas concentrations, and more to provide a multifaceted perspective on the processes that affect climate.”
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION?All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center.
Like most earthlings, you probably didn’t make it to Easter Island to see the solar eclipse on Sunday July 11. But here’s something you would not have been able to see even from Easter Island: a combined space-and-surface view of the eclipse.
This is another in the series of fantastic solar images that Goddard’s Steele Hill releases to science museums and other public places every week from the Solar Dyanamics Observatory (SDO), SOHO, and STEREO spacecraft. Hill is one of our media people for those three missions.
Steele created this image by combining an image taken by the Williams College Expedition to Easter Island (the black-and-white portion) with snapshots from space courtesy of SDO and SOHO.
SOHO’s contribution, in red, shows the sun’s outer atmosphere (corona). To make the corona more visible, SOHO uses a device called a “coronograph” to cover the glaring central disk. It’s sort of what you do when you hold your palm out to mask the blinding glare of a bright light shining in your eyes.
The Williams College image (again, the black-and-white portion) shows the sun’s inner corona.
Finally, SDO donated the image of the sun’s central disk to cover the silhouette of the moon, which blocked the sun’s glare during the eclipse.
Steele Hill
Voila! A truly blogolicious composite of gogblog’s favorite star ever!
In Steele’s own words:
I’ve done this several times before. The challenge is correctly rotating the image to align the structures in the eclipse image with the structures the coronagraph sees. Since the eclipse image was taken in the South Pacific, the image has a different perspective versus our spacecraft. But that did not take too long. I like the way that we can combine ground-based and space-borne images and bring the three perspectives together.
For additional details about this image, read the NASA image release from this morning. And let’s not forget to thank Jay M. Pasachoff, Muzhou Lu, and Craig Malamut from the Williams College Eclipse Expedition for allowing this use of their image.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ OH AND DID I MENTION?All opinions and opinionlike objects in this blog are mine alone and NOT those of NASA or Goddard Space Flight Center.
On Friday this week, NASA/Goddard filmmakers, writers, and animators will screen what they consider their best work of 2011. It’s called the Best of Goddard Film Festival, and it’s held every year about this time for Goddard employees. (For employees, the festival will run from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm in the Goett Auditorium, Building 3.)
Overview
Movie Controls
Layers
Adjustments
