When you think about all the forms of indoor entertainment available to us—the internet, cable TV, video games—it’s no surprise that the outdoors is having a hard time competing for our attention. But it turns out that a little exposure to the sun is not just beneficial, it’s actually vital to our health.
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This looks like your brain on drugs, but it’s actually a rare solar eclipse from last June in which Venus moved between the Sun and the Earth the way the Moon usually does. Venus looked like a thinner and thinner crescent until it was perfectly aligned with the Sun, creating a Venusian annular eclipse with a ring of fire. The Solar Dynamics Observatory imaged the Sun in three colors of UV light, producing data for this image. The next Venusian solar eclipse will occur in 2117, so you’ll have time to enjoy this photo for awhile before it’s challenged by something even crazier. [APOD]
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When you stare at the sun it just looks like pain. But when the New Solar Telescope (NST) does, it can catch glimpses of truly mesmerizing solar activity, and all without going blind. Here, for example, is the most precise picture of a sunspot ever taken, in all its flaming glory. It’s like a solar black hole in a field of molten stained glass.
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In about a billion years the Sun will be too hot and bright for water to exist on Earth. We will probably mosey on at that point or perish. But if we’re still alive and somewhere in the neighborhood when the Sun runs out of hydrogen and becomes a red giant we can observe it looking something like this.
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It’s summer, which means we can all stop complaining how cold it is and start complaining how hot it is. It also means beaches, swimsuits, and s’mores.
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So you’re doing your groceries or are out for a run, when you suddenly get a call – and then your phone dies because it’s out of power. What’s a desperate person supposed to do at that point, especially when the call is an important one?
Consider yourself lucky if you’re in New York, though, since you could probably just set off for the nearest Street Charging station to give your phone some much-needed power.
These solar-powered charging stations are thanks to the collaboration between AT&T, portable solar power systems developer Goal Zero, and Brooklyn design studio Pensa. The Street Charge stations were rolled out in various areas of New York.
Each station has PV panels installed on top and an internal battery that stores power gathered from the sun. Just plug your phone in and wait a few minutes to give your phone enough power to make that call or to charge it up because you have nothing better to do but stand and enjoy a sunny day. And also because you want to knock a couple of bucks off of your electric bill.
The concept for the Street Charge charging stations were done in early 2012 by Pensa. Marco Perry, one of the members of the studio’s team, described it as “an elegant all-in-one community solution for solar charging of mobile devices.”
From the looks of it, we agree.
[via Gizmag]
Earlier this month, NASA announced that they would be sending a probe into orbit later this month to study the sun’s lower atmosphere. As promised, the space agency has launched the satellite into space to begin its two year mission to study the mysteries of the sun and the odd lower atmosphere that has many
It sucks that we have to ride around in Honda Civics and the like, they are driving Landspeeders and piloting X-Wings in a galaxy far, far away; not to mention the Millennium Falcon. But hey, you can make your car look like it is part of the Star Wars universe and protect it from those hot Tatooine suns at the same time.
This amusing Millennium Falcon vehicle sun reflector is the perfect way to protect your car and keep it looking geeky at the same time. It’s only $21.99(USD), which is a whole lot less than building your own spaceship.
Anything that makes your ride look more like the Falcon inside, complete with crew, is good with me.
[via Thisiswhyimbroke]
NASA always has some cool photos to show off, and this little gem, especially, doesn’t disappoint. As a part of NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, the Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite took photos of the sun for a whole year and combined them into one picture. The result is a sun with nothing but solar
Back in April, we heard that NASA was preparing for its IRIS mission to the sun by getting the satellite ready for the launch. NASA announced that IRIS (short for Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph) will be launching on June 26 and will be put in Earth’s orbit where it will have a peek into the
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