So it's fingers crossed for the Solar Dynamics Observatory, destined to help the predictions of "space weather".
SDO promises to become an exciting mission as an orbiting solar observatory with multiple high-definition telescopes has never been attempted before…

The prelaunch readiness press conference will be held at 1 p.m. EST, on Monday, 8th February 2010 from the Kennedy Space Center News Center. It will be immediately followed by the SDO science briefing, both briefings will be
broadcast live on NASA Television. Launch is set for 9th February 2010 (10:30 – 11:30 a.m. EST).

Unfortunately we wont have realtime images like we have with SOHO

At 130Mbps - we'd struggle to keep up, and to establish and maintain an internet server platform to host that content would be an epic, and expensive challenge.

That's a couple of Petabyte's per annum once you factor in the need to keep the raw data and have the space for a couple of derived products for each image. Even if they decide to release jpg's in a manner similar to the MER releases we won't be having a Midnight Sol Browser downloading all of those to our PC's anytime soon.

One per hour would be ok

nprev,

I think you are going to love SDO as well. I watched the pre-launch science briefing this morning, and it is a damn powerful observatory. And of course we will still be getting data from STEREO.

I think we are going to learn a lot about our nearest star.

Ron

So when does the mission officially begin? They've launched successfully, and have to maneuver into a better orbit, but how long until the firehose opens up? I hope they follow the HiRise team's lead....

April I think

Hmmm. The SDO Mission website is down. I hope that is not a bad sign. They will probably get it back online after the holiday here.

Pertinent to this thread, one of the people on the Scientific Briefing last week commented that they were hoping to get SDO in orbit at solar minimum so they could follow an entire solar cycle. They were quite delighted that the Sun had "cooperated" by delaying its exit from minimum.

BTW, the briefing materials are here. There are some pretty cool graphics there.

It's been off for a few days now.

"It will take about 3 weeks to circularize SDO's orbit and another month to test the spacecraft and check out the science instruments. We will see first light in about 60 days"

From a new blog post on TPS. Doing well so far....

The Planetary Society blog was written by fellow Solar System Ambassador Ken Kremer and is certainly worth a read.

SDO is being described as "the crown jewel" of Solar observatory missions. As part of their outreach, National Air and Space Museum (and another museum whose name I don't remember) will have big flat screens showing the near real time images of the Sun. (1.5 terabytes/day will be coming down to the ground.)

You know, I think we are going to need an SDO thread.

SDO website s back online with news that on February 17, 2010 the observatory completed the first of 9 main engine burns that will raise the spacecraft from 2500 Km into its final geosynchronous orbit at 36000 Km...

SDO is on Station

Tue, 16 Mar

The third Trim Motor Firing (TMF #3) was successfully completed Tuesday evening. This apogee burn raised our perigee to geosynchronous with an orbital period of one day.

SDO is on station, next is to start up the instruments!

For part the way up, one channel of the EVE instrument was on. All the doors and filters were closed, though which means that its measurement was uncorrupted by light.

Every time the spacecraft went through perigee, the signal on that channel spiked by a factor of 10. The first perigee was less than 1 hour after we turned the EVE electronics on. It was kind of scary watching it the first time, wondering if it would ever turn around. We recognized almost immediately that we were seeing the protons of the inner Van Allen belt. Our instrument is relatively well shielded against the electrons of the outer belt, but we could (just barely) see that belt also.

Now EVE is an ultraviolet instrument, not a radiation instrument, and is not calibrated to do an actual radiation measurement. We can't say that a particular measurement represents so many particle hits per second, particle energy, particle type, or really anything other than we got higher counts here than there. But it does make an interesting map.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA4Y4kSzGNE

Neat! Someone help me on the music... something by Bizet?

Beethoven's Ninth, second movement (Molto Vivace)

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010IAUS..264..434S


Plan to use images of the solar observatory SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory) too to search for transit exoplanets?

SDO isn't taking the same sort of imagery as the instruments mentioned in that article.

http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/mission/project/leostatus.php

They've reached science orbit and are testing instruments now. Encouraging to see that they're posting on weekends...

First light is expected very soon

HMI door open. Sweet.

EVE instrument: All four doors open, all channels are functioning properly

Heard at the UK Space Conference, a STEREO scientists wouldn't comment directly about SDO when asked if he had seen pictures yet - but he said "I'm smiling"

I think they are opening the doors to the AIA instrument today.

All 4 doors on the AIA instrument successfully opened a few hours ago.

First Light press conference tentatively scheduled for 21 April 2010

Confirmed now.

From SDO's Twitter updates:

"First Light press conference scheduled for April 21st! Calibration tests so far are amazing. Updates here: http://ow.ly/1uKgs "

Not building these images up at all, are they?

Massive solar prominence

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov//data/REPRO...eit304_1024.jpg

PLEASE PLEASE let SDO have captured that !!!!!!!

LASCO C2

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov//data/REPRO...331_c2_1024.jpg

Visible in the C3 images now

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov//data/REPRO...342_c3_1024.jpg

Unfortunatey, it looks like SOHO missed most of the event.

I wasn't sure what I was going to write about today; that'll do nicely! Thanks for keeping an eye on the Sun for the rest of us, Sunspot! I would love to see SDO images of this; I don't yet have a good sense for what SDO will be showing us.

Im soooo hoping SDO caught this... can you imagine it not in a 1024x1024 pixel image like SOHO but one at 4096x4096 and images every 10 seconds

Made a animated GIF from the C2 images

And from C3

SDO started a calibration maneuver at 8:00UTC during this event, in which it turned away from the Sun. During the maneuver it would have briefly glanced at the Sun again. This was after the EIT image mentioned above, but before the coronagraph images. I can't say anything about whether AIA was taking pictures before 8:00, just what the spacecraft as a whole was doing. If they were taking pictures before this maneuver or during the part where the spacecraft glanced back, they should have something (additional) awesome to show at the first light press conference.

ohh never mind.

It's not like this is the last flare expected to occur during SDO's lifetime. There will be dozens, hundreds, thousands over the next decade.

Direct link for the LASCO C2 movie of the recent mass ejection

http://soho.esac.esa.int/data/LATEST/current_c2.mpg

(interesting to see something apparently flying splat into the Sun on 10 Apr - I assume this has been discussed elsewhere)

Word is the SDO press conference on the 21st will have video of at least one prominence, but it's not necessarily either seen here. As Doug said, there will be lots to see over the years.

Comet Eaten By the Sun As Spacecraft Watches

Not so rare an event it seems. From 2006: Comet Plunges into the Sun

No, not at all. IIRC, SOHO's picked up more than 1700 Sun-grazing comets, many of which actually impacted the Sun.

Relatively bright ones like this are uncommon, though, and definitely very cool!

All this activity is really making me want to buy a solar telescope... Had a look through a few, and seeing prominences in an eyepiece is absolutely amazing. I think that once SDO starts releasing images, and video, of the Sun "in action" demand for solar telescopes is going to go through the roof...

I feel some overtime coming on...

Yes, but the Sun has been blank and lifeless for about 700 days over the last few years, this is like Christmas coming.

Some pics taken by french amateur here
http://www.astrosurf.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/025003.html
http://www.astrosurf.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/025001.html
http://www.astrosurf.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/024994.html
http://www.astrosurf.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/024998.html
http://www.astrosurf.com/ubb/Forum3/HTML/024995.html

Pretty amazing

Vache sacrée!

Here's the eruption taken from the full size 1024x1024 C2 images

LASCO C2 Eruption - 13th April 2010

It covers the time frame 09.54 - 16.06 UT

Great view from STEREO Ahead !!!!!!!

http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/browse//...5_n4euA_304.jpg

18 hours from STEREO AHEAD

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4011/452485...1d6ff507b_o.gif

Same from STEREO Behind

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4005/452485...96ae77aec_o.gif

And a half size, full frame animation - 4.5MB

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4027/452552...3ea71a6e3_o.gif

Thanks for posting these views..! Looking forward to lots more from SDO!
Cheers,
-pjam