Just for fun I thought I'd mention that I'm working on a STEREO animation of hi-res EUV data for Science On A Sphere in collaboration with GSFC. This combines the two satellites and uses persistence to show something on the back side of the sun. Hopefully at some point I'll have something (e.g in a cylindrical projection) to show on the web, in addition to SOS itself.

Steve

Here is a test EUV animation. It has a lot of resolution in it, though I'm unsure how well this mp4 file plays in various browsers and such. Feel free to give it a try as it has hundreds of frames at 1500x3000 resolution of the cylindrical map. Each frame is 10 minutes and the file size is 66MB.

http://laps.noaa.gov/albers/sos/sun/stereo/stereo.mp4

Steve

STEREO Sees Jupiter



Click to view attachment
Pics and Vids at the link

Pretty cool; STEREO is going to search for asteroids in the L4/5 regions. A long shot IMHO, but well worth doing.

Wonder what the odds are of finding an old Saturn upper stage or something?

Cool image lyford. BTW they are inviting the public to help find remnants of the hypothetical planet Theia in the heliospheric images. It would be awfully if I just had the time (or the guts ) to stare at the images for a little point of light(s) that may not even exist. Oh bugger!

That really is an amazing shot!

There was an interesting result by STEREO reported in arXiv a few days ago http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.2710
STEREO A has managed to detect for the first time some sort of activity or gas release on the near Earth asteroid Phaethon, long suspected to be an extinct comet because it shares the orbit with a meteor stream

This seems to have gone unnoticed: http://sirius.bu.edu/News/
STEREO A has photographed the comet-like tail of Mercury. and it was noticed by an amateur accessing STEREO images!

Interesting to see the tail and the solar corona wafting by in the animation. Would this increase the odds for aurorae on Mercury?

Probably not. The tail is point away from the sun in an elongated teardrop-like shape. Very little (if any) of the tail is present at a high or low enough latitude for ions to interact with the tail. I suppose it could be possible to see some very faint aurora if the tail were pointing toward the sun. However, the tail is extremely thin and its likely there wouldn't be enough diffusion/inhibitance within it to produce auroras in Mercury's already lightweight magnetosphere.

What would be incredible to see though is if very faint aurora could be produced on the surface in some way. Possibly it could look like the rainbow colors in a soap bubble? We honestly don't understand magnetospheres very well, especially around terrestrial bodies, Mercury being the only other planet aside from Earth to have one in our solar system. Messenger will definitely answer a lot of questions and expand a lot in the ways of knowledge.

This brings to my mind the question of whether this might lead to indirect detection of the existence of sub-mercurial asteroids.

I can't see how you could detect such asteroids when the tail itself is many times less bright than the parent object. Scattered light would be a pain.

Stereo continues to find out new things about solar and plasma physics

contact with STEREO-Behind was lost last October 1
http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/new.shtml

I was reading of their plans for next year's solar conjunction. very interesting, although it almost went unnoticed:
Important Notice About Reduced STEREO Science Operations
Planned Science Data During Reduced STEREO Science Operations
NASA's STEREO Entering New Stage of Operations

Recovery attempts continue, even a year later!
http://phys.org/news/2015-12-nasa-stereo-b...d-recovery.html

The recovery attempts were quite possibly successful!

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/n...-stereo-mission

I've been hoping for this for months. Fantastic.

Umm, you were responding to a post nearly a year old. The recovery attempt back in 2016 didn't succeed and the spacecraft is still out of contact. https://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/behind_status.shtml

Oops. I just wish I hadn't drunk all that cough syrup last night, ya know. :-)

Just checked DSN as per my habit, surprised to see contact with B! (here's a link to a Twitter account that archives DSN status, for anyone who checks later):
https://twitter.com/dsn_status/status/912295068177924097

And another from the 22nd : https://twitter.com/dsn_status/status/911340950517161984

Another carrier lock on STEREO B a few hours ago

https://twitter.com/dsn_status/status/1052443506743103491