Well, firstly, to those referring to this equating to something the ancients may have seen, let's be clear, the "ring" structure is NOT visible, as far as I can tell, to the naked eye. The SDO AIA instrument is viewing the sun in various wavelengths. The ones showing the apparent "ring" structure tend to be, from what I understand in wavelengths showing activity in spectra that highlight activity in the corona generally NOT visible to he naked eye. The photosphere-wavelength images all seem to show a sunspot in the upper left and a facula in the lower right, and not much else. It's just when we look at AIA 171 and 193 filters that we see the ring-like structure.GaryN wrote:This image of the sun was noticed by an ATS member the other day.
I think we may well see some patterns on the sun, if it is undergoing some
power/frequency changes, similar to those seen by the ancients.
http://tinyurl.com/24p23h4
I think some of it is interesting placed coronal holes? Not sure what exactly, if anything, to read into it all?
If one looks at AIA 1600, 1700 4500, not much shows up...
http://tinyurl.com/2e7xplk
I think the former are showing coronal activity and the latter are showing 'visible' photospheric activity
Cheers,
~Michael Gmirkin