The Sunspot: Digitally Remastered

I swear, why don’t I get a hold of these things sooner?

This time, I almost missed a very cool simulation of a sunspot, which is pretty and an amazing accomplishment. According to the badastronomer, it is an amazing accomplishment because magnetic fields are really complex, and so modeling is difficult. Heck, I find electiricity and magnetism of undergrad level complex enough. Some of you ask, what does magnetism have to do with sunspot? Well, tangled magnetic fields from the sun causes sunspot. And it is linked to various violent activities on the sun, like flares and huge outbursts of particles called coronal mass ejection. Anyways, here are the very cool pics:

 

Plus, there are other pics and videos here.

Err… Another Carnival of Space

This time is number 108. How many have I skipped? That just shows how unreliable I am. ^_^ I hope you enjoy the various articles, hosted by a really good blog.

Anyways, this one is solstice edition. For those of you who don’t know, it is the time when the sun is at its highest or lowest point in the sky. In this case, it is the summer solstice, meaning the highest (in the North hemisphere). It happens because Earth is tilted and it means that at some point, one hemisphere will be leaned away from the sun, while another hemisphere will lean towards it.  Meaning, it is the middle of summer, NOT the first day of summer as the rest of US believe it to be. Anyways, it happened at 21 of June, and while it is a bit late… Happy solstice! ^_^