Greetings fellow astrophiles!

I had the good fortune on March 7th of meeting Lorne Covington, the mind behind noirflux.com, at a Hacks/Hackers Syracuse Meetup. Those of you who’ve been to the MOST recently, including those who attended the March 16th TACNY-sponsored Jr. Cafe Scientifique lecture on Satellites and Space Junk, may have had the good fortune of meeting one of Lorne’s installations – the Dancing Light Theater interactive exhibit (see the video below).

I am pleased to report that, just in time for the MOST’s April 2nd Climate Day festivities, another of Lorne’s interactive pieces is going to be in full effect. His Immersive Solar Explorer will be set up in the MOST (yet another thing some of the CNYO attendees will miss as we turn our attention (and our scopes) to the Sun on the Creekwalk all afternoon). A sneak preview of this exhibit (and description) is shown in the vimeo video below.

Immersive Solar Explorer from NoirFlux on Vimeo.

Waving your hand near the large moving sun reveals intricate moving structures on and above the solar surface. The base image is of the sun at 80,000 degrees, and when you hold your hand near the sun, the 1,000,000 degree image is revealed, both images moving in sync. (The screen is interactive from both sides, hence the reversed legends.)

The imagery is from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov), which updates with a new still image every 15 minutes in a variety of wavelengths. The installation displays a moving animation of the data from the previous five days, up to the last 15 minute image.

This early version is using the 1K (1024×1024) SDO data, the updated version uses the 2K and 4K datasets for greater visual clarity, and offers selection of wavelengths to view.

Music: Sunsets (excerpt) by Sang Froid