Solaris - view the Sun in 3D

[oreilly]

Solaris is my new application, freely available on the Android Market. View solar flares and sunspots in 3D, as seen by the twin NASA STEREO spacecraft currently orbiting our home star. Extreme ultraviolet images of the Sun are displayed on a sphere in near-real-time as they are received and processed by NASA. The version on the market is very much a Beta version; more features coming soon! All suggestions welcomed. Android 1.6+ required.

 

[Algoz66]

Solaris is my new application, freely available on the Android Market. View solar flares and sunspots in 3D, as seen by the twin NASA STEREO spacecraft currently orbiting our home star. Extreme ultraviolet images of the Sun are displayed on a sphere in near-real-time as they are received and processed by NASA. The version on the market is very much a Beta version; more features coming soon! All suggestions welcomed. Android 1.6+ required.

On my phone, there's a huge slice of the sun missing (like a wedge of cheese)

 

[oreilly]

On my phone, there's a huge slice of the sun missing (like a wedge of cheese)

There are two STEREO spacecraft orbiting about the Sun - one ahead of the Earth, and one behind. Each spacecraft can image half of the Sun. Combined imagery from both spacecraft would cover the entire solar surface if the spacecraft were separated from one another by 180 degrees - but in that case there would be no overlap between images. Instead the spacecraft are separated by about 140 degrees so that actual 3-dimensional images of solar flares can be obtained from the overlapping images. But there is a region of the solar surface that cannot be seen by either spacecraft - hence the missing cheese wedge.

The next version of Solaris will include a "More info" button that will explain the cheese wedge and other aspects of the mission and data. Maybe the display should include actual position of the two spacecraft, which might make it more obvious - but I don't want to be too much like IPhone's "3D Sun"

There's more info about the STEREO mission at
STEREO - Science Center - Where is STEREO?

 

[oreilly]

Here is a movie at the STEREO web site showing the missing data wedge:
STEREO