Magnetic Field Model Of Sun Explains Solar Activity Cycles
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Since the 18th Century, scientists have been aware that the Sun oscillates between periods of high and low solar activity in an 11-year cycle. So far, though, they have been unable to fully...
Latest Space plasmas Stories
NASA Solar activity continued on May 14, 2013, as the sun emitted a fourth X-class flare from its upper left limb, peaking at 9:48 p.m. EDT. This flare is classified as an X1.2 flare and it is the 18th X-class flare of the current solar cycle. The flare caused a radio blackout – categorized as an R3, or strong, on NOAA’s space weather scales from R1 to R5 -- which has since subsided. The flare was also associated with a non-Earth-directed CME. CMEs and flares are separate but...
NASA Given a legitimate need to protect Earth from the most intense forms of space weather -- great bursts of electromagnetic energy and particles that can sometimes stream from the sun -- some people worry that a gigantic "killer solar flare" could hurl enough energy to destroy Earth, but this is not actually possible. Solar activity is indeed currently ramping up toward what is known as solar maximum, something that occurs approximately every 11 years. However, this same solar cycle...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online On Sunday (May 12) the Sun emitted a significant solar flare that is being classified as the first X-class event of 2013. The X1.7 flare, which peaked at about 10 p.m. EDT, was also associated with another solar event known as a coronal mass ejection (CME). While CMEs can release radiation and solar material in the direction they were produced, Sunday’s phenomenon was not directed at Earth. While solar flares also have the...
NASA The sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 1:32 pm EDT on May 3, 2013. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however -- when intense enough -- they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel. This disrupts the radio signals for as long as the flare is ongoing, and the radio blackout for this flare has already...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online NASA's Cassini spacecraft has helped shed light on one way the bubble of charged particles around Saturn changes with the planet's seasons. Earth has a magnetosphere like Saturn, and the latest results may help scientists better understand variations in it and the Van Allen radiation belts, which both affect things from space flight safety to satellite and cell phone communications. Researchers wrote in the Journal of Geophysical...
NASA A NASA-funded sounding rocket mission will launch from an atoll in the Pacific in the next few weeks to help scientists better understand and predict the electrical storms in Earth's upper atmosphere. These storms can interfere with satellite communication and global positioning signals. The mission, called EVEX, for the Equatorial Vortex Experiment, will launch two rockets for a twelve-minute journey through the equatorial ionosphere above the South Pacific. The launch window for...
Watch the video "Scientists Detect Dark Lightning Linked To Visible Lightning" Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Discovered in 1991, dark lightning is an electrical phenomenon that occurs deep within a thunderhead and is responsible for producing a powerful burst of radio waves and gamma rays. Now, new research from an international team of scientists has found that dark lightning and visible lightning may be connected, according to a report in Geophysical Research...
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory A gauge on the Voyager home page tracks levels of two of the three key signs scientists believe will appear when the spacecraft leave our solar neighborhood and enter interstellar space. When the three signs are verified, scientists will know that one of the Voyagers has hurtled beyond the magnetic bubble the sun blows around itself, which is known as the heliosphere. The gauge indicates the level of fast-moving charged particles, mainly protons,...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Astronomers have snapped a very detailed image of the outer atmosphere of the red supergiant Betelgeuse. This star is the nearest red supergiant to Earth, easily visible to the unaided eye sitting on the top left shoulder of Orion the Hunter. Betelgeuse is about 1,000 times larger than our Sun and lies about 650 light years away from Earth. Astronomers took a new image with the e-MERLIN radio telescope array operated from the...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online NASA has released a video of the unbroken coverage of the sun for the past three years, taken by its Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The spacecraft's Atmospheric Imaging Assembly snaps a shot of the sun every twelve seconds in ten different wavelengths. The latest video shows the past three years of the sun at a pace of two images per day. [ Watch the Video: Three Years With Solar Dynamics Observatory ] The video, released...
Latest Space plasmas Reference Libraries
Solar cycles: what are they and why should we care about them? Solar cycles are made up of what are known as solar minimums (min) and solar maximums (max). We refer to a solar min at the time when the sun is not active with many sunspots, while a solar max is just the opposite when we see a large increase in sunspot activity. So how long do solar cycles last? Typically they run on what is known as an 11 year cycle from the max to the min and then start over again anew. As of 2012 we...
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...
A Radio Atmospheric signal (sometimes referred to as Sferic or Spheric), is a broadband electromagnetic impulse that occurs during atmospheric lightning discharges. Sferics spread out from the lightning source and can be received thousands of miles away. A sferic, depending on atmospheric conditions, may extend anywhere from a few kHz to several tens of kHz. Sferics from far reaching storms, over 1500 miles away, are generally offset in frequency range and may be picked up as tweeks. A...
Hannes Olof Gösta Alfvén (May 30, 1908 - April 2, 1995) was a Swedish plasma physicist born in Norrköping, Sweden. Alfvén received his PhD from the University of Uppsala in 1934. His thesis was titled "Investigations of the Ultra-short Electromagnetic Waves." He was originally trained as an electrical power engineer and later moved on to research and teaching in the fields of plasma physics. Alfvén made many contributions to plasma physics, including theories describing the...
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...
