This week I downloaded the free iphone app ’3D Sun’ (App store link here). This application was written by the team at NASA who are also responsible for the spaceweather.com report, a webpage that tracks the Earth-Sun environment.
There is a huge amount of publicly available image data on our Sun, including real-time, three-dimensional video of the Sun at multiple ultraviolet wavelengths (thanks to the Stereo-A and Stereo-B satellites). This video is an example of dozens of time-lapse movies available at the website.
The iphone app ’3D Sun’ allows for direct, easy access to that data, and also provides alerts to your phone in the event of a big event on the Sun, such as a huge solar prominence erupting or a coronal mass ejection- useful for astronomy teachers in particular and solar physics enthusiasts in general. NASA is dedicated to making this data easily accessible, and this application is part of that work.
You can scroll around the Sun in three-dimensions, zoom in and out, and watch the Sun evolve over time. Along with the Mars and Moon Globe Apps (and of course Google Earth for iphone), 3D Sun adds nicely to the library of ‘three-dimensional data of solar system objects on my phone’. Waiting on the other planets now. Screenshots below.
From the Aurora Page
Info About the Stereo Spacecrafts
A 3-D, rotatable image of the Sun
