Saturday, November 6, 2010

The Moon Gets in the Way (again)


Here comes the Moon! Right on schedule the Moon passes between SDO and the Sun, seen here in the AIA 171 bandpass. We use these transits to understand the pointing of the spacecraft. One of these transits will someday block out an active region so that we can study the energy in that region with EVE. Today's transit covered part of the southern hemisphere, which is pretty quiet, and blocked the quietest part of that.

Next lunar transit is December 6 at 0310 UTC.