World Travel Zone: Photo: Most Detailed Image of a Sunspot

More Good News to read!...

Photo: Most Detailed Image of a Sunspot: "

"At the centre of the sunspot the temperature is around 3,600C, while the surrounding regions are much hotter, more than 5,800C. The irregular shapes that surround the sunspot are known as granulation and are made of hot gas rising from inside the Sun. Each one is around 1000km in size. The telescope that took the picture is know as the New Solar Telescope which uses adaptive optics, parts that change to adapt to disturbances in the atmosphere and correct distortions in the signals."

In other news, the Kepler satellite team reports the possible discovery of an Earth-sized planet in another solar system: "This is the first announcement of a candidate Earth-size planet by the Kepler mission, which in March 2009 launched a one-ton spacecraft to search for planets like ours that just might harbor life. The planet was among more than 700 candidate planets that the team announced in June. If it is made of similar stuff as Earth, its mass would be three to four times as much."

Also, a very interesting video has been released which illustrates all the asteroids that have been discovered in our solar system from 1980 to 2010. There are a hell of a lot of them.

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

What you're seeing, according to the YouTube poster:

View of the solar system showing the locations of all the asteroids starting in 1980, as asteroids are discovered they are added to the map and highlighted white so you can pick out the new ones.

The final colour of an asteroids indicates how closely it comes to the inner solar system.
Earth Crossers are Red
Earth Approachers (Perihelion less than 1.3AU) are Yellow
All Others are Green

Notice now the pattern of discovery follows the Earth around its orbit, most discoveries are made in the region directly opposite the Sun. You'll also notice some clusters of discoveries on the line between Earth and Jupiter, these are the result of surveys looking for Jovian moons. Similar clusters of discoveries can be tied to the other outer planets, but those are not visible in this video.

As the video moves into the mid 1990's we see much higher discovery rates as automated sky scanning systems come online. Most of the surveys are imaging the sky directly opposite the sun and you'll see a region of high discovery rates aligned in this manner.

At the beginning of 2010 a new discovery pattern becomes evident, with discovery zones in a line perpendicular to the Sun-Earth vector. These new observations are the result of the WISE (Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer) which is a space mission that's tasked with imaging the entire sky in infrared wavelengths.

Currently we have observed over half a million minor planets, and the discovery rates snow no sign that we're running out of undiscovered objects.