This is a first notice that there will be a Special Colloquium on July 5 at 3-4pm in Lecture Theatre 1 by Alan Title, which should be of general interest. Alan is a Principal Investigator on NASA’s new Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/ In particular Alan was an architect of the Advanced Imaging Assembly Instrument providing the great new high-resolution images and movies of the Sun, such as these: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/hotshots.php An abstract of Alan’s talk is given below. Alan Title (the solar physicist responsible for the images/movies from the new Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft - see below) is visiting the School of Physics and giving a talk. It should be of general interest, with some beautiful pictures of the Sun. --- SDO and Global Solar Phenomena Alan Title Senior Fellow LM Advanced Technology Center Palo Alto, CA, USA The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) was launched on 11 February 2010 into a geosynchronous orbit that allows it to view the Sun 24/7 and download science data at over 100 megabits/second. SDO carries three instruments, the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) that produces full Sun line-of-sight and vector magnetograms as well as doppler maps for seismic analysis; the Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment (EVE) measures the solar irradiance from spectra that span 0.1 to 105 nm every 10 seconds, and the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly that produces full Sun images over a temperature range from 6000 to 20,000,000 K. AIA consists of 4 telescopes each of which operates in two EUV bands that are narrow enough to isolate spectral lines. In 12 seconds all eight wavelength channels are readout from the 4096x4096 CCDs carried by each telescope. The high cadence of the observations coupled with the full Sun field of view, the 10,000 to 1 dynamic range of the CCDs, and the ability to directly downlink all the data in realtime is revolutionizing our understanding of a variety of solar processes. In this talk I will focus on the global nature of flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). It will be demonstrated the the Sun can operate collectively over more than 180 degrees of latitude. Current indications are the the large scale topology generated by the surface fields controls the span of violent solar events. Movies will be shown that demonstrate some of these collective events. Also realtime access to the data sets will be demonstrated.