Extreme Solar Images

NASA’s SOHO Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) scientific instrument has captured a complete solar cycle in the ultraviolet (extremely short wavelength light waves) spectrum. This remarkable collage demonstrates the extent to which the Sun changes over its cycle. Solar cycles have been documented for several hundred years, but never with so much detailed information as over this past cycle.

Every eleven years, our Sun goes through a solar cycle. A complete solar cycle has now been imaged by the sun-orbiting SOHO spacecraft, celebrating the 12th anniversary of its launch yesterday. A solar cycle is caused by the changing magnetic field of the Sun, and varies from solar maximum, when sunspot, coronal mass ejection, and flare phenomena are most frequent, to solar minimum, when such activity is relatively infrequent. Solar minimums occurred in 1996 and 2007, while the last solar maximum occurred in 2001 Pictured above is a SOHO image of the Sun in extreme ultraviolet light for each year of the last solar cycle, with images picked to illustrate the relative activity of the Sun.

Image, story courtesy SOHO – EIT Consortium, ESA, NASA & Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Please read our previous post about what the Sun is and what it does. Also read about how Solar activity can be correlated with global climate fluctuations. Then please refer to our Global Warming Resources page.

Educate yourselves – don’t trust good-intentioned but misinformed sources, and be wary of political opportunists whose goal is not to save mankind, but to cripple free enterprise and democracy.