1,500 Images Of Sun in just 5 Minutes [ Nasa's new Sounding Rocket ]

Nasa's scientists launched a sounding rocket on 5th May at 2:25pm EDT ( 11:55pm IST ) which is said to take 1,500 images of the sun 320km up above the surface of the earth. The sounding rocket was launched  from the White Sands Missile Range near Las Cruces, New Mexico . 


NASA took the Rapid Acquisition Imaging Spectograph Experiment which is known as RAISE in Short. It was designed to inspect every split-second changes occuring near the Sun's active regions, it includes areas with the intense complex magnetic activity that can give rise to solar flares, which gives out energy and solar material into space.


Other mission's like NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) , the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory ( STEREO) have already been designed to study the Sun Continuously. But studying some certain areas of the sun requires high-cadence observations inorder to understand the split-second changes occuring in the sun which was not possible with those two mission's. For this soul purpose RAISE was designed. 

Don Hassler, the principal investigator for the RAISE at the Southwest Research Institute said, " Dynamic processes happen on all timescales - With RAISE, we'll read out an image every two-lengths of a second, so we can study the processes and changes on the sun very quickly. That's around 5 to 10 times faster than comparable instruments on other satellite missions. Also RAISE is pushing the limits of high-cadence observations, and doing so is challenging, But that's exactly what the NASA sounding rocket program is for".


The RAISE creates an image called a spectrogram, which separates light from the Sun into all its different wavelength components. By looking at intensity of light at each wavelenth, scientists can judge how solar material and energy work around the Sun, and how that movement evolves into massive Solar Eruptions.