Latest Sun Stories
Joshua Kelly for RedOrbit.com Researchers with the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers are investigating a link between the massive solar minimum that occurred around 2800 years ago and the effects that it had on the climate of Europe. They are still researching how the solar minimum could possibly impact the region of Europe in general. One thing they have been researching is information from Lake Maar to see how the sediment in the lake correlates to the solar minimum....
Our solar system is four and a half billion years old, but its formation may have occurred over a shorter period of time than we previously thought, says an international team of researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and universities and laboratories in the US and Japan. Establishing chronologies of past events or determining ages of objects require having clocks that tick at different paces, according to how far back one looks. Nuclear clocks, used for dating, are based on...
ESA has awarded the contract to build its next-generation Sun explorer to Astrium UK. Solar Orbiter will investigate how the Sun creates and controls the heliosphere, the extended atmosphere of the Sun. Prof. Alvaro Giménez Cañete, ESA Director of Science and Robotic Exploration and Miranda Mills, National Director – Earth Observation, Navigation and Science of Astrium signed the contract on 26 April on the occasion of a ceremony celebrating 50 years of the UK in space. The...
Approximately every 11 years the magnetic field on the sun reverses completely – the north magnetic pole switches to south, and vice versa. It's as if a bar magnet slowly lost its magnetic field and regained it in the opposite direction, so the positive side becomes the negative side. But, of course, the sun is not a simple bar magnet and the causes of the switch, not to mention the complex tracery of moving magnetic fields throughout the eleven-year cycle, are not easy to map out....
Research to be presented at the Conference on Lasers and Electro Optics illuminates 50-year mystery To produce the maximum amount of energy, solar cells are designed to absorb as much light from the Sun as possible. Now researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, have suggested – and demonstrated – a counterintuitive concept: solar cells should be designed to be more like LEDs, able to emit light as well as absorb it. The Berkeley team will present its findings at the...
Heart-like cells made in the laboratory from the skin of patients with a common cardiac condition contract less strongly than similarly created cells from unaffected family members, according to researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The cells also exhibit abnormal structure and respond only dully to the wave of calcium signals that initiate each heartbeat. The finding used induced pluripotent stem, or iPS, cell technology to create heart-muscle-like cells from the skin...
[ Watch the Video ] According to a new study, large amounts of dark matter do not surround the Sun, despite some widely accepted theories. Some scientists believe that the Sun is accompanied by dark matter, which is an invisible substance that can only be detected indirectly by the gravitational force its exerts. Theories predict that the average amount of dark matter in the Sun's part of the galaxy should be in the range of .88-pounds to 2.2-pounds of dark matter in a volume the...
ST. LOUIS, April 18, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Solutia Inc. (NYSE: SOA), a global leader in performance materials and specialty chemicals, announces its LLumar® AIR80(TM) window film meets the United States Department of Transportation's (DOT's) Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration's clarification to safety regulations regarding window visibility in commercial trucks. Millions of commercial trucks may now utilize select UV window films on side windows for added protection from...
AVENTURA, Fla., April 18, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Online car accessories retailer mAuto Store is driving ahead with the launch of its exclusive car sun shades. The company is about to release an innovative product video starring its Eyes Car Sun Shades. The thriving online car accessories retailer mAuto Store has announced the video launch of its Eyes Car Sun Shade line and it's sure to be an instant hit. Straying from the traditional, status-quo-keeping image of the car accessories...
AVENTURA, Fla., April 18, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The online startup mAuto Store has announced the release of its intriguing line of Eyes Car Sun Shades. Not only are the products appealing and interesting but so is the way that they are being presented to the public. Taking imagination and blending it with boldness is the way that mAuto Store plans on breathing new life into a once sleepy industry starting with its Eyes Car Sun Shades on April 17, 2012. The online aftermarket car...
Latest Sun Reference Libraries
The prominent feature that allows for the existence of life on Earth is the Sun. Radiation from our closest star provides heat and energy to our planet, driving biological processes and providing the necessary conditions for liquid water to naturally exist. But our Sun is only but one star in this vast Universe. And as it turns out, most stars are quite different than the one that illuminates our day. For this reason, scientists have, for hundreds of years, attempted to study the other...
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...
Being a meteorologist for over thirteen years you start to take note of many things in the atmosphere and how they repeat themselves. Our Climate is no different. The definition of climate is stated as: the collective weather data in regards to moisture and temperature for over 30 years for the same location. So to better understand our climate we need to look at this. First, we have average temperatures for given places based on the 30 year average. Some years the temps are warmer or...
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...
The spectroheliograph captures a photographic image of the Sun at a single wavelength of light. The wavelength chosen usually coincides with a spectral wavelength of one of the chemical elements present in the Sun. George Ellery Hale and Henri-Alexadre Deslandres developed I independently in 1890 and was further refined in 1932 by Robert R. McMath to take motion pictures. It operates by using a prism together with a narrow slit that passes a single wavelength. The light focuses on a...
