A caravan of cars traveled from Huron to the DDO this past Thursday evening. We arrived shortly after 7pm and were greeted by Paul Mortfield and Michelle Johns. We assembled in the lecture hall inside the administrative building for a lecture by Paul on the sun and space weather.
Paul gave a dynamic lecture about the sun, solar flares, coronal mass ejections and more. The lecture was filled with animations and video clips revealing the activity taking place constantly on our sun. We were reminded that looking directly at the sun can create the dangerous effect called FFE (French Fried Eyeballs).
Here are some facts we learned in Paul’s lecture:
- The diameter of the sun is 109 time the diameter of the Earth.
- The sun rotates completely around in a 27 day cycle. This was first noticed by Galileo when he saw sun spots.
- The surface of the sun is 10 thousand degrees while the corona, the sun’s atmosphere, is 2 million degrees. We don’t really understand why.
You can explore some of the threads of research described in the lecture on the NASA’s Heliophysics, SOHO Mission, and Solar Dynamics web pages.
After the lecture, we walked up the hill to the big dome and spent some time learning about the largest telescope in Canada! Members of the club got to move the telescope. Unfortunately, we had cloudy skies….
What did you like best about the visit to the DDO? Please feel free to use the comments field below to share your experience.
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