We don't yet know if this flare hurled a CME into space. If it did, it could have a grazing Earth-directed component. Confirmation awaits fresh data from SOHO coronagraphs.
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Giant sunspot AR3664 unleashed another X-flare today (May 11th @ 0139 UT)--its strongest yet. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured a bright ultravolet flash from the category X5.8 explosion: Radiation from the flare caused a deep shortwave radio blackout over the Pacific Ocean. Ham radio operators and mariners may have noticed loss of signal at frequencies below 30 MHz for as much as an hour after the flare's peak.
We don't yet know if this flare hurled a CME into space. If it did, it could have a grazing Earth-directed component. Confirmation awaits fresh data from SOHO coronagraphs. https://spaceweather.com/
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Yesterday (9 February) at 13.14 UT, the sun produced one of the most powerful solar flares in years, an X3.4-class explosion from just behind the sun's southwestern limb. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) recorded the extreme ultraviolet flash: The source of the flare appears to be departing sunspot AR3575. Because the blast site was eclipsed by the edge of the sun, the flare was probably even stronger than its X3.4 classification suggests. This was a big explosion. Hours after the flare's peak, Earth was still feeling the effects of the blast. Solar protons energized by the flare are following curved magnetic field lines from the sunspot back to our planet. The resulting hailstorm, called a "radiation storm," is still intensifying at the time of this writing (9 February) and has just reached category S2: This plot shows what NOAA's GOES-18 satellite is seeing right now. The colored lines count the number of energetic protons streaming past the satellite en route to Earth. Green and blue are of special interest because they trace "hard protons" capable of upsetting spacecraft electronics, e.g., causing reboots of onboard computers and temporarily fogging cameras. The explosion also hurled a bright CME into space. It will not hit Earth. Instead, a NASA model of the CME shows it is heading for Mercury, Venus and Mars. It will hit all three planets this weekend. 10 February 2024: For the second day in a row, energetic protons from the sun are raining down on Earth. This is called a "solar radiation storm," and it is currently a category S2 event. A data-plot from NOAA's GOES-18 satellite shows how protons surged around our planet just after yesterday's X-class solar flare: The colored lines count the number of energetic protons streaming past GOES-18 en route to Earth. Green and blue are of special interest because they trace "hard protons" capable of upsetting spacecraft electronics, e.g., causing reboots of onboard computers. These particles can even reach all the way down to aviation altitudes, boosting dose rates for passengers and crews flying commercial planes over Earth's polar regions. We can actually *see* some of these protons. Take a look at this SOHO coronagraph movie of the sun hours after the flare: The "snow" in this movie is caused by the radiation storm. Each speckle is a solar proton striking the spacecraft's digital camera. This is a good example of how radiation storms can temporarily interfere with orbital imaging systems.
Another effect of the radiation storm is an ongoing blackout of shortwave radio transmissions around Earth's poles. This is called a "polar cap absorption event". Earth's magnetic field is guiding many of the incoming protons towards the poles, where they ionize the upper atmosphere; this, in turn, wipes out radio signals below 30 MHz. Many shortwave radios inside the Arctic Circle simply won't work until the radiation storm is over. https://spaceweather.com Recent measurements by NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory reveal a rapid weakening of magnetic fields in the polar regions of the sun. North and south magnetic poles are on the verge of disappearing. This will lead to a complete reversal of the sun's global magnetic field perhaps before the end of the year. An artist's concept of the sun's dipolar magnetic field. Credit: NSF/AURA/NSO. If this was happening on Earth there would be widespread alarm. Past reversals of our planet's magnetic field have been linked to calamities ranging from sudden climate change to the extinction of the Neanderthals. On the sun, it's not so bad. "In fact, it's routine", says Todd Hoeksema, a solar physicist at Stanford University. "This happens every 11 years (more or less) when we're on the verge of Solar Maximum." Vanishing poles and magnetic reversals have been observed around Solar Max in every single solar cycle since astronomers learned to measure magnetic fields on the sun. Hoeksema is the director of Stanford's Wilcox Solar Observatory (WSO), that is observing its fifth reversal since 1980. The last five polar field reversals observed at the Wilcox Solar Observatory (inset) "One thing we have learned from these decades of data is that no two polar field reversals are alike," he says. Sometimes the transition is swift, taking only a few months for the poles to vanish and reappear on opposite ends of the sun. Sometimes it takes years, leaving the sun without magnetic poles for an extended period of time. "Even more strange," says Hoeksema, "sometimes one pole switches before the other, leaving both poles with the same polarity for a while." Indeed, such a scenario could be playing out now. The sun's south magnetic pole has almost completely vanished, but the north magnetic pole is still hanging on, albeit barely. How does all this affect us on Earth? One way we feel solar field reversals is via the heliospheric current sheet: An artist's concept of the heliospheric current sheet. The sun is surrounded by a wavy ring of electricity that the solar wind pulls and stretches all the way out to the edge of the Solar System. This structure is a part of the sun's magnetosphere. During field reversals, the current sheet becomes extra wavy and highly tilted. As the sun spins, we dip in and out of the steepening undulations. Passages from one side to another can cause geomagnetic storms and auroras.
Most of all, the vanishing of the poles means we're on the verge of Solar Maximum. Solar Cycle 25 is shaping up to be stronger than forecasters expected, and its peak could be relatively intense. Stay tuned for updates! https://spaceweather.com/ Daily Mail: Wed, 19 Oct 2022 17:47 UTC © NASA These handout photos provided by NASA show the 'Pillars of Creation' that are set off in a kaleidoscope of color in theJames Webb Space Telescope's near-infrared-light view (R) compared to the Hubble telescope's 2014 wider view in visible light The James Webb Space Telescope captured the iconic "Pillars of Creation," huge structures of gas and dust teeming with stars, NASA said Wednesday, and the image is as majestic as one could hope. The twinkling of thousands of stars illuminates the telescope's first shot of the gigantic gold, copper and brown columns standing in the midst of the cosmos. At the ends of several pillars are bright red, lava-like spots. "These are ejections from stars that are still forming," only a few hundred thousand years old, NASA said in a statement. These "young stars periodically shoot out supersonic jets that collide with clouds of material, like these thick pillars," the US space agency added. The "Pillars of Creation" are located 6,500 light years from Earth, in the Eagle Nebula of our Milky Way galaxy. The pillars were made famous by the Hubble Space Telescope, which first captured them in 1995 and then again in 2014. But thanks to Webb's infrared capabilities, the newer telescope -- launched into space less than a year ago -- can peer through the opacity of the pillars, revealing many new stars forming. "By popular demand, we had to do the Pillars of Creation" with Webb, Klaus Pontoppidan, the science program manager at the Space Telescope Science Institute, said Wednesday on Twitter. STScI operates Webb from Baltimore, Maryland. "There are just so many stars!" Pontoppidan added. NASA astrophysicist Amber Straughn summed it up: "The universe is beautiful!" she wrote on Twitter. © NASA This handout photo provided by NASA on October 19, 2022 shows the 'Pillars of Creation' that are set off in a kaleidoscope of color in the James Webb Space Telescope's near-infrared-light view The image, covering an area of about eight light years, was taken by Webb's primary imager NIRCam, which captures near-infrared wavelengths -- invisible to the human eye.
The colors of the image have been "translated" into visible light. According to NASA, the new image "will help researchers revamp their models of star formation by identifying far more precise counts of newly formed stars, along with the quantities of gas and dust in the region." Operational since July, Webb is the most powerful space telescope ever built, and has already unleashed a raft of unprecedented data. Scientists are hopeful it will herald a new era of discovery. One of the main goals for the $10-billion telescope is to study the life cycle of stars. Another main research focus is on exoplanets, planets outside Earth's solar system. https://www.sott.net/article/473446-Iconic-Pillars-of-Creation-captured-in-new-JWST-image The first pictures from Juno's flyby of Europa on Sept 29th have arrived on Earth, and they are beautiful. At closest approach, the spacecraft was only 219 miles (352 km) above the ocean moon's icy crust, revealing cryovolcanic ridges, strangely curvaceous fractures, and frozen "rafts." Credit: NASA/SwRI/MSSS/Navaneeth Krishnan S This is only the third close pass in history below 310 miles (500 kilometers) altitude and the closest look at Europa any spacecraft has gotten since Jan. 3, 2000, when NASA’s Galileo spacecraft came within 218 miles (351 kilometers) of the surface.
At closest approach, Juno was directly above a region of chaos terrain called "Annwn Regio" where rafts of ice had previously broken free and re-frozen. Researchers suspect that water from beneath Annwn Regio must be breaking through from time to time. Researchers will be looking carefully at these images to see if anything has changed since Galileo visited 20+ years ago. www.spaceweather.com Sept. 24, 2021: Lightning on Earth is getting weirder and weirder. On the evening of Sept. 20th, Puerto Rican photographer Frankie Lucena pointed his Sony A7s camera at an offshore electrical storm. This is what he saw: “This Gigantic Jet plasma event occurred over a very powerful thunderstorm near the Virgin Islands just ahead of Tropical Storm Peter,” says Lucena. “I can’t believe I was able to capture such amazing details.” Indeed, this is one of the best-ever photos of a Gigantic Jet. Sometimes called “Earth’s tallest lightning” because they reach the ionosphere more than 50 miles high, the towering forms were discovered near Taiwan and Puerto Rico in 2001-2002. Since then, only dozens of Gigantic Jets have been photographed. They seem to love storms over water and are famous for surprising passengers onboard commercial aircraft. In 2017 and 2018, lightning researcher Oscar van der Velde of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya set up high speed cameras on the northern coast of Colombia in a dedicated campaign to capture Gigantic Jets. In three months of observing time he managed to capture only 12. That’s how elusive they are. Above: The red arrow points from Lucena’s camera to the offshore electrical storm. “Frankie has photographed a rare Gigantic Jet with ‘carrot’ morphology, first reported by Su et al (2003),” notes van der Velde. “The other, more common type of jet has a ‘tree’ morphology.” Here is a comparison: trees vs. carrots.
“Carrot jets” are remarkable for their internal beads–that is, bright balls of light hundreds of meters wide. Lucena caught dozens of them illuminating the jet’s midsection. They might be places where streamers inside the jet are intersecting, or regions of enhanced heating. “We don’t know,” says van der Velde. “Gigantic Jets are not easily placed in front of a spectrograph.” Meanwhile, Lucena is still marveling at what happened. “This is the brightest Gigantic Jet I have ever seen. It was truly remarkable.” https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2021/09/26/a-gigantic-jet-with-fireballs/
Sept. 24, 2021: No solar storms? No problem. Earth has learned to make its own auroras. New results from NASA’s THEMIS-ARTEMIS spacecraft show that a type of Northern Lights called “diffuse auroras” comes from our own planet – no solar storms required.
Diffuse auroras look a bit like pea soup. They spread across the sky in a dim green haze, sometimes rippling as if stirred by a spoon. They’re not as flamboyant as auroras caused by solar storms. Nevertheless, they are important because they represent a whopping 75% of the energy input into Earth’s upper atmosphere at night. Researchers have been struggling to understand them for decades.
Above: Diffuse auroras and the Big Dipper,
photographed by Emmanuel V. Masongsong in Fairbanks, AK
“We believe we have found the source of these auroras,” says UCLA space physicist Xu Zhang, lead author of papers reporting the results in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics and Physics of Plasmas.
It is Earth itself. Earth performs this trick using electron beams. High above our planet’s poles, beams of negatively-charged particles shoot upward into space, accelerated by electric fields in Earth’s magnetosphere. Sounding rockets and satellites discovered the beams decades ago. It turns out, they can power the diffuse auroras. The video below shows how it works. The beams travel in great arcs through the space near Earth. As they go, they excite ripples in the magnetosphere called Electron Cyclotron Harmonic (ECH) waves. Turn up the volume and listen to the waves recorded by THEMIS-ARTEMIS:
Above: A great electrical circuit in space powering diffuse auroras. ECH waves were sonified by NASA’s HARP (Heliophysics Audified: Resonances in Plasmas) software.
ECH waves, in turn, knock other electrons out of their orbits, forcing them to fall back down onto the atmosphere. This rain of secondary electrons powers the diffuse auroras.
“This is exciting,” says UCLA professor Vassilis Angelopoulos, a co-author of the papers and lead of the THEMIS-ARTEMIS mission. “We have found a totally new way that particle energy can be transferred from Earth’s own atmosphere out to the magnetosphere and back again, creating a giant feedback loop in space.” According to Angelopoulos, Earth’s polar electron beams1 sometimes weaken but they never completely go away2, not even during periods of low solar activity. This means Earth can make auroras without solar storms. The sun is currently experiencing periods of quiet as young Solar Cycle 25 sputters to life. Pea soup, anyone? [Note: Solar Cycle 25 is accelerating. MS} End Notes: (1) Why do these electron beams exist? Earth’s magnetosphere is buzzing with energetic particles. Many of them are captured from the solar wind. When these particles strike the top of Earth’s atmosphere (the ionosphere), they dislodge electrons. Electric fields, which form naturally in Earth’s spinning magnetosphere, grab the liberated electrons and accelerate them skyward in collimated beams. (2) Why don’t the beams ever go away? Short answer: because the solar wind never stops blowing. Even when the sun is quiet, Earth’s magnetosphere is jostled and energized by the ever-present solar wind. As a result, electrons are always being knocked off the top of Earth’s atmosphere as described in Note #1. Although solar storms are not required for this process, solar storms can help. For instance, when a CME strikes Earth’s magnetosphere, the contents of the magnetosphere become extra-energized. Lots of particles furiously strike the top of Earth’s atmosphere, liberating even more electrons than usual. Earth’s electron beams can thus become super-charged. When the storm subsides, the electron beams may weaken, but they never vanish because even the quiet sun produces solar wind. References: Zhang, X., Angelopoulos, V., Artemyev, A. V., Zhang, X.-J. (2021), Beam-driven ECH waves: A parametric study, Phys. Plasmas, 28, 072902, https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0053187 Zhang, X., Angelopoulos, V., Artemyev, A. V., Zhang, X.‐J., Liu, J. (2021). Beam‐driven electron cyclotron harmonic waves in Earth’s magnetotail. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 126, e2020JA028743. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JA028743s https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2021/09/20/earth-can-makes-its-own-auroras/ This could be NASA's most exciting mission--ever. The space agency announced yesterday that they will send a heliocopter to Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Titan is in many ways more like Earth than any other place in the solar system. It has rivers and lakes, a thick atmosphere, and organic compounds that could support the genesis of life. The quad-chopper, named "Dragonfly," will fly between sites on interest, covering more than twice the distance of every Mars rover combined. Get the full story from nasa.gov.
www.spaceweather.com MIT Technology Review; Fri, 21 Jun 2019 18:43 UTC © NASA The Tibetan Plateau is a vast elevated plain almost five kilometers above sea level, sometimes called the Roof of the World. It is bordered to the south by the world's highest mountain range and to the north by desert lands. It is one of the most isolated places on Earth.
But the extreme altitude makes it a useful place for scientists. In 1990, they built an observatory here to study the showers of subatomic particles that rain down from the upper atmosphere whenever it is hit by a high-energy cosmic ray. This work is better done at high altitude because there is less atmosphere to absorb the particles. Since then, the so-called Tibet Air Shower Array has recorded vast numbers of high-energy cosmic rays, particles accelerated to huge energies by astrophysical phenomena such as supernovas, active galactic nuclei, and mysterious as-yet-unidentified sources. But the array also picks up air showers caused by a different source - high-energy photons. These mysterious photons are also created by astrophysical phenomena such as the interaction between high-energy particles and the cosmic microwave background. Consequently, they can provide a unique insight into these processes and the environments in which they occur. Over the years, the Tibet Air Shower Array has spotted plenty of these photons with energies up to dozens of teraelectronvolts (TeV 1012). That's roughly equivalent to the highest-energy photons that can be created on Earth. But nobody has ever observed more powerful photons. Until now. Today, researchers from the Tibet Air Shower Gamma Collaboration say they have observed photons with energies above 100 TeV for the first time, including a remarkable photon with an energy of almost 500 TeV. This single photon has about the same energy as a falling Ping-Pong ball and is the highest-energy photon ever recorded. The collaboration has also worked out where these photons are coming from: the Crab Nebula, the remnants of a supernova that occurred in 1054 AD in the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way, some 6,500 light-years from Earth. .... read more at https://www.sott.net/article/415559-Earth-hit-by-highest-energy-photons-ever-recorded-from-the-Crab-Nebula © REUTERS / Amr Abdallah Dalsh NASA has clocked up numerous amazing technological feats of engineering and ingenuity for decades, but a recent video from the space agency shows just how much work they have cut out for them. In just the last few years, NASA has provided some incredible perspectives on our own planet, including stunning images of some of the Earth's most majestic natural phenomena. Not content with studying our own backyard, the agency has beamed back photos and videos from Mars thanks to its now-deceased rover, not to mention orbiting far-flung asteroids to try and understand the origins of the universe itself. In an attempt to explain the vastness of their field of study, NASA helpfully put together a short explainer video showcasing the mindblowing scale of the Milky Way galaxy. Our Milky Way Galaxy: How Big is Space? NASASolarSystem
Published on Apr 2, 2019 When we talk about the enormity of the cosmos, it’s easy to toss out big numbers – but far more difficult to wrap our minds around just how large, how far, and how numerous celestial bodies really are. How big is our Milky Way Galaxy and how far away are exoplanets, the planets beyond our solar system? Read more: go.nasa.gov/2FTyhgH Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Friday night (April 5th) in Norway, researchers at the Andøya Space Center launched two sounding rockets into a minor geomagnetic storm. The results were out of this world. Aurora tour guide Kim Hartviksen photographed glowing blobs of blue and purple caused by the rockets dumping chemical powders into the storm: Photo credit: Kim Hartviksen of Aurora Addicts "Residents for hundreds of miles were taken by surprise by these strange lights, which prompted calls to the police and 'The aliens are coming!' hysteria!" says Chris Nation who runs the Aurora Addicts guiding service. When the night began, Nation, Hartviksen, and their clients were treated to a display of auroras, ignited by a stream of solar wind buffeting Earth's magnetic field. "As the auroras started to ebb away, our friends at Andøya launched their rockets into the fading lights," says Nation. "The show began anew as the rockets released their payload into the upper atmosphere." An automated webcam operated by Chad Blakely of Lights over Lapland in Abisko, Sweden, caught the first puffs of powder emerging from the rockets. "It looked like an invasion of UFOs," says Blakley. "Soon the glowing blobs evolved into more complicated structures--like two giant squid dancing in the northern sky with an impressive aurora display as its backdrop," decribes Blakley. "Our webcam has been taking a picture every five minutes for nearly 10 years. These images are by far the most exciting I've ever seen it record."
The name of the sounding rocket mission is AZURE--short for Auroral Zone Upwelling Rocket Experiment. Its goal is to measure winds and currents in the ionosphere, a electrically-charged layer of the Earth's atmosphere where auroras appear. Specifically, the researchers are interested in discovering how auroral energy might percolate down toward Earth to influence the lower atmosphere. The twin rockets deployed two chemical tracers: trimethyl aluminum (TMA) and a barium/strontium mixture. These mixtures create colorful clouds that allow researchers to visually track the flow of neutral and charged particles, respectively. According to NASA, which funded the mission, the chemicals pose no hazard to residents in the region. Update--a movie! "Here is my realtime video of the surprise rocket launch last night from NASA/ASC," reports Ole Salomonsen of Tromsø, Norway. "I was shocked when I saw this in the night sky facing north, I was not aware of the launch. www.spaceweather.com When a stream of solar wind hits Earth's magnetic field, magnetometers around the Arctic Circle normally go a bit haywire, with their needles swinging chaotically as the buffeting ensues. Rob Stammes of the Polarlightcenter, a magnetic observatory in Norway, sees such disordered behavior all the time. But on Nov. 18th something quite different happened. The solar wind produced a pure sine wave: "A very stable ~15 second magnetic oscillation appeared in my recordings, and lasted for several hours," he says. "The magnetic field was swinging back and forth by 0.06 degrees, peak to peak." Imagine blowing across a piece of paper, making it flutter with your breath. The solar wind can have a similar effect Earth's magnetic field. The waves Stammes recorded are essentially flutters propagating down the flanks of our planet's magnetosphere excited by the breath of the sun. Researchers call them "pulsations continuous" -- or "Pc" for short.. "A sensitive magnetometer is required to record these waves," says Stammes. "I use a mechanical magnetometer with bar magnets suspended from a special wire. LEDs and light detectors in an isolated dark box record the motion of the magnets, while vanes in oil damp out non-magnetic interference." Pc waves are classified into 5 types depending on their period. The Nov. 18th waves fall into category Pc3. Researchers have found that Pc3 waves sometimes flow around Earth's magnetic field and cause a "tearing instability" in our planet's magnetic tail. This, in turn, sets the stage for an explosion as magnetic fields in the tail reconnect. A quartet of NASA spacecraft recently flew through just such an explosion. Last week, researchers from the University of New Hampshire reported that four Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) spacecraft spent several seconds inside a magnetic reconnection event as they were orbiting through Earth's magnetic tail. Sensors on the spacecraft recorded jets of high energy particles emerging from the blast site. One jet was aimed squarely at Earth and probably sparked auroras when it hit the upper atmosphere.
Stammes has recorded many Pc waves in the past, "but this is the first time I have detected category Pc3," he says. "This was a very rare episode indeed." www.spaceweather.com Laura Geggel; Live Science; Wed, 07 Nov 2018 09:34 UTC © NASA Astronaut aboard the International Space Station captures image of orange airglow enveloping Earth An eerie, marmalade-colored light show made Earth look like a gigantic orange lollipop, prompting an astronaut aboard the International Space Station to snap a photo of it on Oct. 7. And yesterday, NASA shared the glorious shot with Earthlings down below.
The enveloping orange hue is known as airglow - a mesmerizing luminescence caused by chemical reactions high in Earth's atmosphere, NASA reported. This ghostly glow usually happens when ultraviolet radiation from sunlight energizes molecules of nitrogen, oxygen, sodium and ozone in the atmosphere. These energized molecules then bump into each other and lose energy as they collide, resulting in a faint but spectacular afterglow, NASA said. Airglow is best seen at night, as it's 1 billion times fainter than sunlight, NASA said. This particular photo was taken at an altitude of more than 250 miles (about 400 kilometers) above Australia. The radiating blush, also known as chemiluminescence, is comparable to glowing chemical reactions here on Earth, including those seen in children's toys such as glow sticks and glow-in-the-dark silly putty, NASA added. But airglow is more than an entrancing light attraction. It can also teach scientists about the workings of the upper atmosphere. For instance, it can shed light on how particles near the interface of Earth and space move, including how space weather and Earth weather are connected, NASA said. Researchers are already using satellites - such as NASA's Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) - to study this dynamic zone. Although this airglow emanated orange, the phenomenon isn't always the color of the snack food Doritos. In 2016, a photographer in the Azores islands in the Atlantic Ocean took a photo of a rainbow-colored airglow, according to Space.com, a sister site of Live Science. The Parker Solar Probe has just radioed NASA with good news. The spacecraft survived its close approach to the sun on Nov. 5th. Because the sun is a giant natural source of broadband radio noise, Parker cannot transmit complicated data streams through the interference. Images and data won't arrive until early December when the probe has reached a sufficient distance from the sun again. For now, mission controllers are happy to have received a simple beacon saying the spacecraft is okay. First Perihelion: Into the Unknown - Parker Solar Probe JHU Applied Physics Laboratory Published on Nov 2, 2018 Earlier this week, Parker screamed around the sun at 213,200 mph only 15 million miles from the stellar surface--shattering old records for both speed and distance. Intense sunlight raised the temperature of the probe's heat shield to about 820 degrees Fahrenheit. All the while, instruments and systems behind the shield kept cool in the mid-80s F.
Mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab received the status beacon at 4:46 p.m. EST on Nov. 7, 2018. It indicated, simply, "A" — the best of all four possible status signals, meaning that the probe is operating well with all instruments running and collecting science data and, if there were any minor issues, they were resolved autonomously by the spacecraft. Stay tuned for "first light" science results about one month from now. www.spaceweather.com NASA's Parker Solar Probe is now closer to the sun than any other spacecraft in history, shattering the previous record of 26.6 million miles set by the Helios 2 spacecraft in 1976. The probe is now well inside the orbit of Mercury."It's a proud moment for our team," says Project Manager Andy Driesman of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Count to 3. Parker just broke the record again. The spacecraft is accelerating sunward for the mission's first perihelion on Nov. 5th. At closest approach, the solar disk will seem 6 times wider than it does on Earth as the probe is hit by "brutal heat and radiation" (NASA's words). Parker's carbon-composite heat shield is expected to heat up to a sizzling 2000 deg. F. Parker's prime mission is to investigate the origin of the solar wind--a project best done uncomfortably close to the star. Parker will trace the solar wind back to its source and find out how it escapes the sun's gravity and magnetic confinement. Russell Howard of the Naval Research Laboratory expects to learn a lot from this encounter. "We might detect magnetic islands in the solar wind, which have been theoretically predicted. And if a CME (solar explosion) happens or a comet passes through the sun's atmosphere while we are so nearby, it could be spectacular." Howard is the principal investigator for WISPR, the probe's wide-field camera system. WISPR can actually see the solar wind, allowing it to image clouds and shock waves as they approach and pass the spacecraft. Other sensors on the spacecraft will sample the structures that WISPR sees, making measurements of particles and fields that researchers can use to test competing theories.
"We lose communication with the spacecraft during the perihelion period which begins next week," notes Howard. "This is because there isn't sufficient power to drive both the instruments and the transmitter. The first dump of data will occur in early December." Stay tuned for that. Parker will plunge toward the sun 24 more times in the next 8 years, breaking many records en route. Here's the timeline. www.spaceweather.com |
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