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The Sun, the Planets, and the Stars

• Solar Eclipse (0.3 MB, mpeg format): On May 10, 1994, the Bloomington, IN area was treated to a spectacular view of a near-annular solar eclipse. Although Bloomington was about 40 miles south of the path of annularity, the view was still impressive. This movie is made from a collection of images taken one minute apart by our solar telescope on top of Kirkwood Observatory.
• Saturn's Moons: On the night of November 22, 1995, several IU astronomers and their collaborators used the WIYN telescope to take several exposures of Saturn's ring system. A subset of these images were combined into a movie for easy viewing of the ring moons' orbits. Make sure you check out IU's Saturn Ring Crossing Page for lots more information about this rare celestial event.
• Convection on a White Dwarf Surface (0.2 MB, mpeg format): This movie shows the time evolution of density in a small box at the surface of an accreting white dwarf about to undergo a nova explosion. The bottom part (blue, denoting higher density) is the actual white dwarf core, whereas the convective part (red, denoting lower density) is the accreted hydrogen envelope (or the white dwarf atmosphere). The yellow and the green parts denote the actual layer in which a thermonuclear explosion is on its way to causing a nova explosion. (This simulation was performed on a Silicon Graphics workstation by Anurag Shankar in collaboration with David Arnett of the University of Arizona.)