[Diaspora] Solar flare footage

[Brad Murray]

STEREO picked up an amazing solar flare a couple of days ago. Here's some
footage that is a kind of slow-motion from the time-lapse (normal speed?).
Keep the scale of this in your head: that flare is VASTLY larger than our
entire planet. And that few seconds represents 30 hours of activity, but
still, do a little back-of-the-envelope guestimation -- that burst of high
energy plasma is moving FAST! This is all kinds of awesome. For me the thing
it strikes most effectively at is the realisation that the sun, in all its
enormity and distance, is a real, concrete, thing. It's not an abstract
source of heat and light in the sky -- it has its own history to execute and
our little planet is not relevant in that context.

And yet, we keep making ourselves relevant, even in the small (by
comparison) effort of successfully observing it in this kind of detail, and
transmitting it to anyone who's interested. Anyone! Science today is right
there, in unbelievable detail, for anyone interested. This is a golden age
in at least that respect.

-- 
Brad Murray (halfjack)
VSCA Publishing
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