Solar 'Constant' - Faculae vs Sunspots

  • Credit

    NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio. Source data courtesy of HAO & NSO PSPT project team. HAO is a division of the National Center for Atmospheric Research which is supported by the National Science Foundation.

The Solar 'Constant' - Faculae vs. Sunspots

Three views of the Sun showing different levels of solar activity. The color table has been altered to enhance the appearance of the faculae (white regions) which are hotter than sunspots (red-black regions) and whose greater total area contribute to increasing the solar flux reaching the Earth.

Low solar activity - October 28, 1998

Metadata

  • Sensor

    PSPT/CaIIK Camera

  • Animation ID

    2644

  • Video ID

    None

  • Start Timecode

    00:00:00:00

  • End Timecode

    00:00:00:00

  • Animator

    Tom Bridgman

  • Studio

    SVS

  • Visualization Date

    2002/11/30

  • Scientist

    William R. Ochs (NASA/GSFC), Robert F. Cahalan (NASA/GSFC), Gary Rottman (University of Colorado/LASP)

  • Keywords

    Sun, Faculae, Sunspots, Solar Cycle

  • DLESE Subject

    Space science

  • Imagemods

    Images were resampled so the solar disk has the same apparent size on all images (varying Earth-Sun distance effect removed) and pixels resampled to square aspect.

  • Data Date

    2002-04-27T18:03:48.864Z, 2001-03-28T18:03:20.113Z, 1998-10-28T19:33:41.000Z

  • Animation Type

    Stills

  • Other Credits

    Special thanks to Vanessa George (University of Colorado/LASP) and Randy Meisner (Michigan State University)