Solar Facts and Space Weather
Ten years ago yesterday (5 February 2002) saw the launch of the Reuven Ramaty High-Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager, or RHESSI (pronounced reh-see). RHESSI was designed to study particle acceleration and energy transport during solar flares by observing the highest energy X-rays and gamma-rays. These X-rays and gamma-rays are produced when particles (electrons and protons) are [...]
A spectacular filament eruption from June 7, 2011 captured by the STEREO Ahead spacecraft with EUVI 304, Cor1 and Cor2. Happy Birthday STEREO!! October 26 ,2011 is the 5th anniversary of the launch of the STEREO mission and its 2 spacecraft. The STEREO Mission (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) was launched at 1:52 am [...]
With the approaching final launch (scheduled July 8, 2011) of the Space Shuttle Atlantis and the end to the 30 plus year Space Shuttle program it is a good time to take a brief fond farewell look at the Shuttle program’s in calculable contribution to modern solar physics. There are many aspects of the [...]
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory or SOHO is by many accounts the granddaddy of modern solar astronomy. SOHO is not the first space based solar observatory but it has truly ushered in a golden age for solar physics. The mission had a primary science phase of 2 years and a overall mission lifetime of 5 [...]
On this day in 2003 (October 28), the Sun unleashed one of the largest and most geoeffective solar storms of the modern age (and consequently, one of the most studied). The eruption was part of what became known as the Halloween storms; two weeks in October and November of that year when two massive sunspot [...]
Thursday morning seemed to take longer to arrive. Expectations were certainly higher, based in no small part on the fact that most of us had flights booked to take us home later that day. Washington DC had just gotten its second massive snow storm in less than a week, adding another foot of snow to [...]
Getting out of Washington DC was not going to be easy. The city was bracing itself for the biggest snowstorm in almost a century over the weekend. The launch of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO; the first mission from NASA’s Living With A Star program) wasn’t scheduled until the following Tuesday at the earliest but [...]
On September 1st, 1859, (151 years ago today) a 33 year old astronomer called Richard Carrington, working at an observatory in Surrey, England, went about his daily duties of sketching the peculiar dark spots that he had been witnessing transiting the Sun. He projected the Sun’s image from the telescope onto a screen (never look [...]
On July 14 2000, the sun produced a spectacular show! Sunspot region NOAA AR9077 when it was close to sun center let of a BANG!!! It was what one might call a text book space weather event. First came the flash of electromagnetic radiation, particles of light from the entire spectrum, radio up to gamma-rays, [...]
