Meet at the nose of the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird in the Boeing Aviation Hangar.

About the Ask an Expert Series: On the second and fourth Thursdays of the month at 12:30 pm at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, a Museum staff member talks to the public about the history, collection, or personalities related to a specific artifact or exhibition in the Museum. For topics of upcoming Ask and Expert talks at the Udvar-Hazy Center, click here.

  • Disk view of the Sun's chromosphere. A few filaments, or darker lines of gases floating away from the chromosphere, are visible. A sunspot cluster (two dark spots) surrounded by a lighter-colored phage cloud is visible in the upper right quadrant.
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    This image of the Sun was taken with a hydrogen-alpha telescope at the Phoebe Waterman Haas Public Observatory at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, at 12:00 pm on January 9, 2015.

    The dark lines on the disk and protrusions around the edges are magnetic loops that extend into the atmosphere of the Sun. When they appear on the disk, they are referred to as filaments; when they are on the edge, they are called prominences. There are also several sunspot groups. At the time of this picture, the largest sunspot group, AR2257, was growing more unstable and had the potential for M-class and X-class solar flares.

    Sunspot AR2257 erupted several days later, on Jan. 13th, producing an M5-class solar flare that caused brief communications blackouts over Australia and the Indian Ocean.

    Telescope: Lunt 100mm hydrogen-alpha

    Camera: Lumenera SKYnyx 2-2M

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  • Disk view of the Sun's chromosphere. A few filaments, or darker lines of gases floating away from the chromosphere, are visible. A sunspot cluster (two dark spots) surrounded by a lighter-colored phage cloud is visible in the upper right quadrant.
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