Recent Comments

    space weather tagged posts

    Newest Solar Telescope produces First Images

    February 1, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Cell-like structures on the surface of the sun
    The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope has produced the highest resolution image of the sun’s surface ever taken. In this picture, taken at 789 nanometers (nm), we can see features as small as 30km (18 miles) in size for the first time ever. The image shows a pattern of turbulent, “boiling” gas that covers the entire sun. The cell-like structures — each about the size of Texas — are the signature of violent motions that transport heat from the inside of the sun to its surface. Hot solar material (plasma) rises in the bright centers of “cells,” cools off and then sinks below the surface in dark lanes in a process known as convection. In these dark lanes we can also see the tiny, bright markers of magnetic fields...
    Read More

    New Model Accurately Predicts Harmful Space Weather

    April 13, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    An artist’s rendering of the Van Allen radiation belts surrounding Earth

    An artist’s rendering of the Van Allen radiation belts surrounding Earth. The purple, concentric shells represent the inner and outer belts. They completely encircle Earth, but have been cut away in this image to show detail.CREDIT: NASA’s Conceptual Image Lab/Walt Feimer

    Predicting ‘killer’ electrons in the Earth’s outer radiation belt protects spacecraft. A new, first-of-its-kind space weather model reliably predicts space storms of high-energy particles that are harmful to many satellites and spacecraft orbiting in the Earth’s outer radiation belt...

    Read More

    Space Weather events linked to Human Activity

    May 18, 2017, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Human activities have been changing near-Earth space and weather. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Genna Duberstein

    Human activities have been changing near-Earth space and weather. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Genna Duberstein

    Our Cold War history is now offering scientists a chance to better understand the complex space system that surrounds us. Space weather – which can include changes in Earth’s magnetic environment – are usually triggered by the sun’s activity, but recently declassified data on high-altitude nuclear explosion tests have provided a new look at the mechanisms that set off perturbations in that magnetic system. Such information can help support NASA’s efforts to protect satellites and astronauts from the natural radiation inherent in space.

    From 1958 to 1962, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. ran high-altitude tests with exotic code names like Starfish, Argus and Teak...

    Read More

    Space Weather Model Simulates Solar Storms from Nowhere

    May 9, 2017, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Watch the evolution of a stealth CME in this simulation. Differential rotation creates a twisted mass of magnetic fields on the sun, which then pinches off and speeds out into space. The image of the sun is from NASA's STEREO. Colored lines depict magnetic field lines, and the different colors indicate in which layers of the sun's atmosphere they originate. The white lines become stressed and form a coil, eventually erupting from the sun. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/ARMS/Joy Ng, producer

    Watch the evolution of a stealth CME in this simulation. Differential rotation creates a twisted mass of magnetic fields on the sun, which then pinches off and speeds out into space. The image of the sun is from NASA’s STEREO. Colored lines depict magnetic field lines, and the different colors indicate in which layers of the sun’s atmosphere they originate. The white lines become stressed and form a coil, eventually erupting from the sun. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/ARMS/Joy Ng, producer

    A kind of solar storm has puzzled scientists for its lack of typical warning signs: They seem to come from nowhere, and scientists call them stealth CMEs. Now, scientists have developed a model simulating their evolution...

    Read More