spacetoday.net: NASA releases first Sun images from SDO

NASA releases first Sun images from SDO

Posted: Fri, Apr 23, 2010, 6:37 AM ET (1037 GMT)
SDO first image of the Sun (NASA)

NASA unveiled on Wednesday the first images of the Sun taken by the new Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft. The images, project scientists said, show details of solar activity never before seen by other spacecraft or ground-based telescopes at a variety of wavelengths. There were no major scientific findings in the new images, but scientists said they expected much more to come from the spacecraft, which they likened to the Hubble Space Telescope in its ability to revolutionize solar science. SDO, launched in February, operates in geosynchronous orbit and returns 1.5 terabytes of data a day through a dedicated downlink.