June 11, 2004
Consider this: the iron in your blood was forged in a supernova explosion billions of years ago.
Venus and the Chromosphere
Birthday · June 11, 2004
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APOD published June 11, 2004. Credit: Stefan Seip. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
joying the 2004 Transit of Venus from Stuttgart, Germany, astronomer Stefan Seip recorded this fascinating, detailed image of the Sun. Revealing a network of cells and dark filaments against a bright solar disk with spicules and prominences along the Sun's limb, his telescopic picture was taken through an H-alpha filter. The filter narrowly transmits only the red light from hydrogen atoms and emphasizes the solar chromosphere -- the region of the Sun's atmosphere immediately above its photosphere or normally visible surface. Here, the dark disk of Venus seems to be imitating a giant sunspot that looks perhaps a little too round. But in H-alpha pictures like this one, sunspot regions are usually dominated by bright splotches (called plages) on the solar chromosphere.
Image credit: Stefan Seip