Coronal Tornado

Milky Way's Center

Via Wired:

A space telescope peering into the Milky Way galaxy’s dusty core has spied a colossal twisted ribbon of supercooled material.

Until now astronomers had only seen bits and pieces of the ribbon’s 600-light-year-wide superstructure, which resembles the symbol for infinity: ∞.

“We have a new and exciting mystery on our hands, right at the center of our own galaxy,” said astronomer Sergio Molinari of the Institute of Space Physics in a press release. Molinari and others describe the strange ribbon in an upcoming Astrophysical Journal Letters study available on arXiv.org.

Astronomers previously studied gas-piercing infrared images of the Milky Way’s cloudy barred core, but they didn’t have photos with resolution high enough to discern the ribbon’s entire structure. Molinari and others found the ring by aiming the European Space Agency’s infrared Herschel Space Observatorytoward galactic center.

The telescope’s images suggest the ring is a chilly 15 degrees Kelvin — warmer regions are blue while cooler regions are red — and has two segments that poke out of the galaxy’s pancake-like plain. Ground-based radio telescope data also hints that the ring is spinning around the core as one cohesive unit.

Although astronomers aren’t certain why the two lobes of the ring twist upwards, they suspect the gravitational tug of nearby galaxies — perhaps Andromeda some 2.5 million light-years away — is responsible.

via http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/07/milky-way-ribbon/

Analemma

An Analemma the figure traced in the sky when the position of the Sun is plotted at the same time each day over a calendar year from a particular location on Earth

Randy Halverson

Time-lapse video of stars/milkyway. 

Plains Milky Way from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.

" Halverson used a robotic camera rig to snap hundreds of still photos in about 20 three- to four-hour shoots. Back at his computer, he stitched together images from the best shoots. Each second of the video spans about 14 minutes of actual time."

Coronal Loops

"Coronal loops form the basic structure of the lower corona and transition region of the Sun. These highly structured and elegant loops are a direct consequence of the twisted solar magnetic flux within the solar body. The population of coronal loops can be directly linked with the solar cycle; it is for this reason coronal loops are often found with sunspots at their footpoints. The upwelling magnetic flux pushes through the photosphere, exposing the cooler plasma below. The contrast between the photosphere and the solar interior gives the impression of dark spots, or sunspots." via

via Nasa Images

Moon

Via MrAndrewBeattie

Sun

A huge thank you to Dr. Joseph Gurman, from  the NASA Solar Physics Laboratory for pointing me in the direction of these images.  Wait for the image to load below, it will be worth it: 

For more data go to http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/

From a different filter:

Via the Solar Dynamics Observatory AIA satellite.