♫♪♫ Do You See What I See ♪♫♪

Today, at 11:12 UT, NASA took a picture of our star, Sol, to commemorate the Northern Hemisphere's Winter Solstice. There is a very nice write up about it here. That's not what I want to talk about though. Being generally fascinated with all things solar, I love diving into the details of pictures like this.

Isn't that magnificent!? Now, this particular photo is in the ultraviolet. There are other wavelengths available for viewing on the Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) website but UV is my favorite. So, I did what I always do. I started to zoom into the detail.

That's when I noticed something I'd never seen before on one of these pictures. There appeared to be a flaw in the image. That's very unusual. The equipment used is highly reliable and artifacts are easily scrubbed out of the images by software - providing they are of a known artifact type. This is routine in any astrophotograph.

I was intrigued. Unfortunately this image was low resolution and I couldn't get a sharper view of the artifact.  I went to the SDO web site, where they keep all these images, looking for a higher resolution shot. There is a (practically) real time camera image there one can use for such things.

The Sun Now window in the middle left side of the page has a zoom feature. I used it to get a better view of the area.

At about 40% zoom I could definitely see that there was still an artifact in the picture. I threw the zoom slider all the way to the right for maximum closeup. 

I was astonished at what I saw. There was a Tengu sitting at zero! Those damn Caldari, they're everywhere. Where's the Gallente Militia when you need them?

*grin*

Happy Holidays to all capsuleers! May you and your's have a wonderful, safe celebration.

Fly Careful