Today, we could finally, honestly, say… SDO is GO!!! The Solar Dynamics Observatory launched today at 10:23am EST by an Atlas V from Kennedy Space Center. (The wha? The this! And this!) And we got to see this:
A few people got this shot, but George is sitting right next to me!
And there’s video of it as well. I haven’t seen an embeddable version yet, but click to see this one hosted on spaceweather.com, taken by 13-year-old Anna Herbst from California. The ripples were seen in the clouds as a result of a shockwave just after the craft went supersonic and as it hit “max-Q” or the point at which the pressure on the craft is at its maximum. (I didn’t keep track of the timing, but Nancy Atkinson of Universe Today did!)
Such a shockwave occurs when an object is moving through a medium faster than the speed of sound in that medium (the atmosphere, in this case). The speed of sound sets the limit of how fast information about the gas can travel within that gas in the atmosphere. Sharp discontinuities in temperature, pressure, and density can occur. We could “see” these discontinuities as it reached the cirrus clouds. For whatever reason, it appeared to bust up the cloud material that was creating the sundog.
Little SDO put on quite a show in its first few minutes as a spacecraft! I’ll be writing more on SDO science and our amazing TweetUp adventure, once I get some darn sleep…
I’m a 7th (and final!) year
9 responses so far ↓
Nachrichten aus der Raumfahrt kompakt « Skyweek Zwei Punkt Null // February 11, 2010 at 23:23 |
[...] DLR PM, Spaceflight Now, Scientific American, Physics World, Sky & Telescope, Universe Today, Noisy Astronomer und Space Today 11., Science@NASA, Jonathan’s Space Report 5., MPG PM 4., STFC PR [...]
phlebas // February 12, 2010 at 07:35 |
That stuff I’m seething with is totally not jealousy. Not at ALL.
So, how did the Atlas launch compare to the shuttle launch?
Nicole // February 13, 2010 at 19:29 |
It was quite a bit slower at the start. It has no solid rocket boosters to get it going, so it’s like…. uh….uh…. don’t topple… uh…. okay there it goes! Also it was a bit different watching a sunny day launch compared to a night launch.
And, we had SDO team members all weepy to see their baby finally go off. So touching!
SDO Almost Ready to Go! « One Astronomer's Noise // February 13, 2010 at 19:29 |
[...] It launched successfully on the second attempt! Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Geomagnetic ReversalURSI [...]
Over zonnehonden en rimpels gesproken | Astroblogs // February 18, 2010 at 15:18 |
[...] van de rimpels in de lichte cirrusbewolking te zien. Heel mooi om te zien. Bron: Bad Astronomy en Noisy Astronomer (goh, we hadden al een slechte sterrenkundige, maar nu ook een luidruchige. Gaat lekker zo [...]
Missile genera onda d’urto visibile « Paoblog // February 19, 2010 at 04:12 |
[...] vedere in alta definizione, il link è questo. Un altro bel video è su SpaceWeather.com. E su NoisyAstronomer c’è una foto [...]
New views from space station/cold weather and global warming rant « steve cross loves music and science // February 19, 2010 at 13:32 |
[...] the video below are REAL. It looks like some kind of computer effect, but it’s NOT. There are still shots of them as well. What’s even more amazing is that another atmospheric phenomenon called a sun [...]
SDO and Space Weather « One Astronomer's Noise // February 20, 2010 at 21:39 |
[...] February 20, 2010 by Nicole The Solar Dynamics Observatory launched last week for the thrilled scientists and engineers who have worked for years on this mission, some happy #SDOisGO TweetUp participants, and countless other space fans around the world. (The who? The wha? Oh, pretty!) [...]
Missile genera onda d’urto visibile // February 28, 2010 at 13:59 |
[...] vedere in alta definizione, il link è questo. Un altro bel video è su SpaceWeather.com. E su NoisyAstronomer c’è una foto [...]