Midnight Musings

In Arabic calligraphy, the ninety-first surah in the Holy Quran, Ash-Shams, meaning ‘the sun’; is written exactly once in the Islamic Calligraphy Diwani Jali script to create an abstract stylized sun. (Full English Translation at the bottom). [discovered this on Etsy, show this artist some love and buy their prints!]

Surah 91 - Ash-Shams

In the name of Allah, the most Gracious and most Merciful.

By the sun and its brightness.
And [by] the moon when it follows it.
And [by] the day when it displays it.
And [by] the night when it covers it.
And [by] the sky and He who constructed it.
And [by] the earth and He who spread it.
And [by] the soul and He who proportioned it.
And inspired it [with discernment of] its wickedness and its righteousness,
He has succeeded who purifies it,
And he has failed who instills it [with corruption].
Thamud denied [their prophet] by reason of their transgression,
When the most wretched of them was sent forth.
And the messenger of Allah [Salih] said to them, “[Do not harm] the she-camel of Allah or [prevent her from] her drink.”
But they denied him and hamstrung her. So their Lord brought down upon them destruction for their sin and made it equal [upon all of them].
And He does not fear the consequence thereof.

Sequence of images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captures the Sun’s July 6th X-flares – the highest possible solar flares – in different ultraviolet wavelengths. [via explore-blog]

nevver:

The Sun Also Rises

itsfullofstars:

Photography’s Longest Exposure

Six months. That’s right. This dream-like picture shows each phase of the sun over Bristol’s Clifton Suspension Bridge taken during half a year.

The image was captured on a pin-hole camera made from an empty drinks can with a 0.25mm aperture and a single sheet of photographic paper.

Photographer Justin Quinnell strapped the camera to a telephone pole overlooking the Gorge, where it was left between December 19, 2007 and June 21, 2008—the Winter and Summer solstices. (That’s a 15,552,000 second exposure.)

(via HouseholdName)

inothernews:rocketjumper:

dvdp:

☀

Wow, what a coincidence!  I posted that seconds after this.

rassilon:unknownskywalker:

NASA’s New Eye on the Sun Delivers Stunning First Images

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, is returning early images that confirm an unprecedented new capability for scientists to better understand our sun’s dynamic processes. Some of the images from the spacecraft show never-before-seen detail of material streaming outward and away from sunspots. Others show extreme close-ups of activity on the sun’s surface. The spacecraft also has made the first high-resolution measurements of solar flares in a broad range of extreme ultraviolet wavelengths.

Launched on Feb. 11, 2010, SDO is the most advanced spacecraft ever designed to study the sun. During its five-year mission, it will determine how the sun’s magnetic field is generated, structured and converted into violent solar events such as turbulent solar wind, solar flares and coronal mass ejections, and will provide critical data that will improve the ability to predict these space weather events, sending 1.5 terabytes of data back to Earth each day.

Since launch, engineers have been conducting testing and verification of the spacecraft’s components. Now fully operational, SDO will provide images with clarity 10 times better than high-definition television and will return more comprehensive science data faster than any other solar observing spacecraft.

SDO will change our understanding of the sun and its processes, which affect our lives and society. This mission will have a huge impact on science, similar to the impact of the Hubble Space Telescope on modern astrophysics.

Image: A full-disk multiwavelength extreme ultraviolet image of the sun taken by SDO on March 30, 2010. False colors trace different gas temperatures. Reds are relatively cool (about 59,727 °C, or 107,540 °F); blues and greens are hotter (greater than 999,727 °C, or 1,799,540 °F).

Source: NASA