SLEUTHS: Any idea what's going on with SOHO?
Date: 8/25/02 2:33:13 AM Pacific Daylight Time
The Sun-jumping around on August 20 (especially EIT 304) is really weird and cannot explained so far in my opinion. If you take a look at http://lasco-www.nrl.navy.mil/stars/sunpos.html you will read
"The plots also indicate variations in the X and Y positions of the Sun. However the variations are so large that we must be very careful before believing them, since we know that the spacecraft doesn't experience such large variations, our own pointing eyes (the PES and boresighters) and the images themselves don't show those excursions."
So it must be a failure of a gyroscope or something unknown hitting the spacecraft heavily.
Date: 8/20/02 12:55:50 PM Pacific
Bird is swaying...ringing like a bell.. Sun moves in time exposure. More
Date: 8/20/02 1:48:52 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Watch the attached EIT195 movie of the past apx. 24 hours, and you will see an incredible number of flares blasting out of region 69 in the lower right quadrant followed by the EIT camera doing a little square-dance. Match up the current EIT304 movie, and you can see the massive ejecta from one of the flares during this latest series generated by one of the most complex regions of this unusually extended solar cycle. ---Larry---
http://lasco-www.nrl.navy.mil/current_mpg/current_eit_195small.mpg
Date: 8/21/02 9:45:02 AM Pacific Daylight Time
Sir Isaac Newton has this to say about the hair-pin, mid-course corrections of solar flares, as witnessed recently via SOHO....
"An object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force."
So, what constitutes the unbalanced force that's strong enough to suddenly deflect highly energized, (high-inertia) solar particles?
As for the sun hoping around, relative to SOHO's field of view, it's probably just SOHO having minor tracking problems, which happens frequently.
"Move along.... Nothing to see here...." ;-]
EDITOR: Agree on tracking...unless we could think of a force that jostles SOHO around too...
Recall the bird was lost before, shortly after this: AOL/orbit/projectile.html
NASA: Missing spacecraft pieces found orbiting sun
NORLOK - NASA/ EIT/ SOL CONNECTION?