After spending more than three months in safe mode, the NASA Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory Ahead (STEREO-A) spacecraft captured a stunning new image of the sun that makes the Milky Way’s central star appear to be blue in color.
The picture, captured using STEREO-A’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager on Wednesday, shows the sun in wavelengths of 171 angstroms, which are typically colorized in blue, according to the US space agency. This instrument, which continuously monitors the sun, collects images in several different wavelengths of light which are typically invisible to the human eye.
The solar orbiter only recently emerged from the far side of the sun, where it had been operating in safe mode, collecting and saving data from radio instruments since March 21. Last Saturday STEREO-A sent back its first images in more than three months, NASA officials said.
STEREO-A survived safe-mode operations unscathed
The three month safe mode was needed due to the geometry between the spacecraft, the Earth and the sun. While STEREO-A’s orbit around the sun is similar to Earth’s, it is slightly smaller and faster, meaning that the probe’s orbit stopped syncing with the Earth’s over the years.
This caused STEREO-A to wind up on the opposite side of the sun from the Earth, which it turn allowed it to capture a side of the star that we couldn’t see from our home planet. However, between March 24 and July 8, the spacecraft was close enough to the sun from that it caused interference, making the probe’s data transmission signal impossible to interpret during that period.
As the spacecraft kept orbiting, it eventually moved far enough away from the sun to exit this so-called transmission dark zone, and starting in late June, the STEREO-A team once again began to receive status updates from STEREO-A, thus confirming that it and its instrument was able to survive the extended period of safe-mode travel without suffering significant damage.
According to NASA, STEREO-A’s radio wave instrument collected and stored data on an almost continuous basis during the safe mode period, and on July 9, mission team personnel switched on the spacecraft’s solar wind and particle instruments. Then, last weekend, the imaging instruments were activated, including the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager that captured the latest photo.
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(Image credit: NASA)
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