Latest Solar wind Stories
John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online While our solar system contains many fascinating objects – planets, moons and the Sun, to name just a few – one of the most interesting and perplexing of these objects lies at its very edge. Our Sun sweeps charged particles through the solar system, encasing us in a cocoon that shields us from the interstellar environment. It is at the boundary of the solar system, where the solar wind slows and the influence of our...
[ Watch the Video: What is Venus? ] John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online At the very edges of the Earth’s atmosphere, where the Earth’s magnetic field begins, solar radiation strips electrons from the tenuous gas that is slowly leaking into space. This region, known as the ionosphere is famously responsible for allowing terrestrial radio transmissions over great distances. During World War II, for example, radio operators would “bounce” signals off...
John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Every year, eager sky watchers travel to the northern reaches of the Earth to catch a glimpse of the northern lights. This spectacle of color in the atmosphere – the Aurora Borealis and its companion to the south, the Aurora Australis – arises as the solar wind interacts with our atmosphere. When charged particles from our Sun hit our atmosphere, oxygen and nitrogen atoms become excited. As the atoms relax, they emit...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Data collected from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Cluster Mission showed for the first time how turbulence within solar wind can create a warming effect as the charged particles travel away from the sun. The solar wind is formed by electrically charged plasma being ejected from the sun’s super hot atmosphere. According to a new report in the new issue of Physical Review Letters based on Cluster data, very small “current...
Watch the video "Simulated Vision of Solar Wind Turbulence" April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Scientists have zoomed in on solar wind to reveal the finest detail yet using the European Space Agency's (ESA) Cluster quartet of satellites as a space plasma microscope. They found tiny turbulent swirls that could play a big role in heating the winds. The fact that these winds stay hotter than they current models predict has been a long-standing puzzle in solar physics...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online NASA said on Monday that our planet has entered a stream of high-speed solar wind that "escaped" through a coronal hole on the Sun. The solar wind that Earth is passing through has forecasters from the NOAA estimating a slight 20 percent chance of geomagnetic storms, but NASA says that high-latitude residents could benefit from the event. Sky watchers may want to step out into their backyards for the next few nights to catch...
NASA In December, a NASA mission to study the sun will make its third launch into space for a six-minute flight to gather information about the way material roils through the sun's atmosphere, sometimes causing eruptions and ejections that travel as far as Earth. The launch of the EUNIS mission, short for Extreme Ultraviolet Normal Incidence Spectrograph, is scheduled for Dec. 15, 2012, from White Sands, N.M. aboard a Black Brant IX rocket. During its journey, EUNIS will gather a new...
WASHINGTON, Dec. 3, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region at the far reaches of our solar system that scientists feel is the final area the spacecraft has to cross before reaching interstellar space. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Scientists refer to this new region as a magnetic highway for charged particles because our sun's magnetic field lines are connected to interstellar magnetic field lines. This...
ESA Set against a star-studded backdrop and a splash of the Milky Way, the green glow of an auroral curtain pervades the permanently dark winter skies of the South Pole. The only sign of life here is the Concordia research station that ESA uses to prepare for future long-duration missions beyond Earth. The site also caters to scientific research from geology and glaciology to climate change, astronomy and planetary magnetic fields. Even though the Sun barely peeks above the horizon...
ESA’s quartet of satellites studying Earth’s magnetosphere, Cluster, has discovered that our protective magnetic bubble lets the solar wind in under a wider range of conditions than previously believed. Earth’s magnetic field is our planet’s first line of defense against the bombardment of the solar wind. This stream of plasma is launched by the Sun and travels across the Solar System, carrying its own magnetic field with it. Depending on how the solar wind’s interplanetary...
Latest Solar wind Reference Libraries
Solar Physics is a journal for solar and solar-stellar research and the study of solar terrestrial physics. Founded in 1967 by solar physicist Cornelis de Jager and publisher D. Reidel, the journal treats all aspects of solar physics, ranging from the internal structure of the Sun and its evolution, to outer corona and solar wind in interplanetary space. Solar Physics has four more than forty years been the principal journal for publications of fundamental research on the Sun. It is...
Ring Current -- A ring current is an electric current carried by charged particles trapped in a planet's magnetosphere. It is caused by the longitudinal drift of energetic (10-200 keV) particles. Earth's Ring Current Earth's ring current is responsible for geomagnetic storms. The ring current system consists of a band, at a distance of 3-5 RE(1), which lies in the equatorial plane and circulates clockwise around the Earth (when viewed from the north). The particles of this region...
Heliopause -- The heliopause is the boundary where our Sun's solar wind is stopped by the interstellar medium. The solar wind blows a "bubble" in the interstellar medium (the rareified hydrogen and helium gas that permeates the galaxy). The point where the solar wind's strength is no longer great enough to push back the interstellar medium is known as the heliopause, and is often considered to be the outer "border" of the solar system. The distance to the heliopause is not precisely...
Corona -- The corona is the luminous "atmosphere" of the Sun extending millions of kilometers into space, most easily seen during a total solar eclipse. An interesting feature of the corona is the fact that it is much hotter than the visible "surface" of the Sun; the photosphere is approximately 6000°C compared to the corona at over one million °C. The corona is much less dense than the photosphere, however, and so produces less light. The exact mechanism by which the corona is...
Aurora -- The Polar Aurora are natural displays of light in the sky that can be seen with the unaided eye only at night. An auroral display in the Northern Hemisphere is called the aurora borealis, or the northern lights; in the Southern Hemisphere it is called the aurora australis. Auroras are the most visible effect of the sun's activity on the earth's atmosphere. The beautiful and often eerie curtains of light in the night time sky have been observed by people for millennia. An aurora...
