Staring at the Sun: NASA takes incredible solar portrait

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Staring at the Sun: NASA takes incredible solar portrait

X-rays stream off the sun in this image showing observations from by NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, overlaid on a picture taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). (NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSFC)

A NASA telescope designed to probe black holes and the vast expanses of the cosmos has set its sights on the burning heart of our own solar system, capturing the sun in all its high-energy x-ray glory.

The picture is the first image of the sun captured using NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR.
While the sun is far too bright for other NASA telescopes to gaze at without risking damage to their detectors, NuSTAR’s high end optics – designed to focus X-rays – were more than up to the task.

READ MORE: Vertigo-inducing NASA video shows Orion hurtling through Earth’s atmosphere

According to the agency, solar scientists had first considered using NuSTAR to study the sun around seven years ago, while it was still under construction. Fiona Harrison of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena was initially skeptical of the idea.

“At first I thought the whole idea was crazy,” said Harrison. “Why would we have the most sensitive high energy X-ray telescope ever built, designed to peer deep into the universe, look at something in our own back yard?”

READ MORE: Galaxies spiral into each other, create spectacular light show (VIDEO, PHOTOS)

She soon warmed to the proposition, however, after David Smith, a solar physicist and member of the NuSTAR team at University of California, Santa Cruz, told her that faint X-ray flashes predicted by theorists could only be seen by NuSTAR….more here

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