• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

UCF Team Helps Satellite Monitor Weather Better

Posted on: Thursday, 1 June 2006, 03:00 CDT

By Tania Deluzuriaga, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

May 24--The launch of a new weather satellite today will bring the sun into clearer view for scientists, thanks to a UCF team.

An improved X-ray telescope with a component designed by UCF optics professor Jim Harvey and graduate students Patrick Thompson and Martina Atanassova is set to be launched into space aboard a satellite today.

The satellite will be used by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to predict weather on Earth and in space.

"The sun is essentially a ball of very hot gas," Harvey said. "When solar flares occur, the sun spews out energy-charged particles that are funneled to the Earth's atmosphere and can have detrimental effects."

Such occurrences can disrupt cell-phone service and global-positioning systems that ships and planes use to navigate.

The University of Central Florida's new optic design allows scientists to take high-resolution X-ray images of the sun, which show weather patterns almost twice as well as previous models.

"What existed before gave a sharp image at the center and got fuzzy around the edges," said Thompson, who now designs space-based optical instruments at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory.

"Our new design lets you see everything more clearly," Thompson said.

By being able to see storms on the sun's surface, researchers can better predict space weather that might affect satellites and take precautions to protect them.

Four flight models of the telescope were built by Lockheed Martin's Solar and Astrophysical Laboratory. When Lockheed Martin asked the UCF team to help them design a better imaging part for their telescope in the late 1990s, they had no idea the team would improve the system so much.

"They came to us to help them improve their optical design," Thompson said. "What we didn't expect was that we would find a much better design than what was out there."

The optics component the UCF team designed is only about 6 inches in diameter, but it has an important job.

"It does the same job your eye would do," Thompson said. "The key is, you're looking with X-rays, so you're seeing with a totally different light."

Once in space, the satellite will hover in a constant position over the Earth, constantly watching for severe-weather triggers that cause tornadoes, flash floods, hail storms and hurricanes.

"It's hard sometimes to see the trees through the forest," Thompson said. "You work years and see it all in details. When it finally gets there and you see the images, it's unreal."

Tania deLuzuriaga can be reached

at tdeluzuriaga@orlandosentinel.com

or 407-420-5718.

-----

Copyright (c) 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

NYSE:LMT,

Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

More News in this Category