For nice current images of the Sun, the Proba 2 satellite [1] continuously watches it and dumps some nice imagery/movies. It's ESA sponsored, and both it's sensors (SWAP producing the visuals) are interpreted by the Belgian Royal Observatory. Iirc the Belgians and the Canadians are the only ones keeping a close eye on the sun, counting sun spots and such. Makes for a nice desktop bg also!
These are from the Swedish Vacuum telescope on La Palma (Canary Islands). This instrument currently offers the highest-resolution solar images anywhere.
The images shown on that page show many convection cells, called the solar supergranulation. Each cell is about the size of Earth.
What you say about who's keeping an eye on the Sun is not the case. In addition to the Swedish telescope above, the Japanese have an excellent high-resolution imager (in orbit) called Hinode, and there are multiple US space imager including SDO and Stereo, plus many terrestrial telescopes.
maybe I'm misinterpreting what you're saying, but this event happened today, so it's pretty current. You can also get "the sun right now" at the SDO site[1], and it looks like they update those every 15 minutes.
There are also several probes that are keeping a close eye on the sun these days, from the more venerable SOHO to the newer STEREO probes and now SDO, of course.
Comments
For nice current images of the Sun, the Proba 2 satellite [1] continuously watches it and dumps some nice imagery/movies. It's ESA sponsored, and both it's sensors (SWAP producing the visuals) are interpreted by the Belgian Royal Observatory. Iirc the Belgians and the Canadians are the only ones keeping a close eye on the sun, counting sun spots and such. Makes for a nice desktop bg also!
[1] http://proba2.oma.be/index.html/
If you want exquisite solar desktop images, the place to go is:
http://www.solarphysics.kva.se/gallery/images/2010/
These are from the Swedish Vacuum telescope on La Palma (Canary Islands). This instrument currently offers the highest-resolution solar images anywhere.
The images shown on that page show many convection cells, called the solar supergranulation. Each cell is about the size of Earth.
What you say about who's keeping an eye on the Sun is not the case. In addition to the Swedish telescope above, the Japanese have an excellent high-resolution imager (in orbit) called Hinode, and there are multiple US space imager including SDO and Stereo, plus many terrestrial telescopes.
maybe I'm misinterpreting what you're saying, but this event happened today, so it's pretty current. You can also get "the sun right now" at the SDO site[1], and it looks like they update those every 15 minutes.
There are also several probes that are keeping a close eye on the sun these days, from the more venerable SOHO to the newer STEREO probes and now SDO, of course.
[1] http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/