The Sun has long held a fascination for mankind. This stretches from the early days of worship to the present day where the study of the Sun and planets increases our understanding of the solar system in which we live. A recent exciting development in the study of the Sun has been the Sunrise project which recently launched a solar telescope into space. In November the results of its first flight revealed some spectacular pictures of the Sun’s surface.
The Sunrise telescope is a collaborative project between the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) and a number of partners based in the USA, Spain, Sweden and Germany. These partners include research facilities such as NASA’s Columbia Scientific Ballooning Facility, the ESRANGE Space Centre in Sweden and the High Altitude Observatory in Colorado. The aim of the mission was to launch a telescope into space which could provide high-resolution images of the Sun’s surface which would assist in studying the magnetic field in the solar atmosphere.
The main instrument for the mission was built by Kayser-Threde under MPS supervision and this comprises a light weight solar telescope of 1m aperture. Other instrumentation includes a spectrograph and magnetograph and with its array of technological features it was expected that the telescope would provide observations of the Sun’s surface which could detect features as small as 30km in diameter. On completion of the telescope a successful test launch was achieved in 2007 and this was followed with the telescope being launched into space from the ESRANGE Space Centre in northern Sweden. The launch date was in June 2009 and a giant helium balloon carried the telescope to an altitude of 37 kilometers above the Earth for a six day period.
While viewing the Sun is possible from the ground, turbulence in the lower atmosphere tends to cause image distortion and by launching the telescope into the stratosphere it was considered that more accurate images could be achieved. At this height the telescope can also view the Sun in ultraviolet light which is not possible on the ground as the ozone layer absorbs this type of light. This was of particular interest to the mission team as variations in solar radiation show up more clearly in ultraviolet light. The telescope was kept aligned for observations by an innovative control system which kept it focused on the Sun during its flight and on completion it detached from the balloon and parachuted safely back to Earth.
While the flight itself took place in June, the results have only started to be released in November and these have shown that the telescope has been a spectacular success. It has provided some stunning images of the surface of the Sun to a level of detail which has never been achieved previously. These show details of the complex interplay that exists on the surface of the Sun and also excellent close ups of the grainy surface structure itself which is known as granulation.
The first views of the results have demonstrated that the telescope is capable of providing information which should help scientists greatly increase our understanding of the Sun and its activity. A total of 1.8 terabytes of data was collected and analysis of this is ongoing. Hopefully as further results are released they will provide ever more impressive details to enhance the study of the Sun and provide a leap forward in our knowledge.
Further flights of the telescope are planned and this will place the Sunrise project at the forefront of solar study. If future flights are as successful as the first then we can expect our understanding of the Sun to move forward in the coming years.
Check out the launch of the Sunrise Telescope below:
… I really don’t give a vandam anymore about the sun. It’s like a big angry fart in space. Every now and then, it spews flares that fry up close planets (like 2012…that movie sucked).