Sun Watch

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WHOA,

thats a HELL of a gif

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the sun is smiling at us

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Violent Solar Eruptions Rock The Entire Star


This image taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory on Aug. 1, 2010 shows a major sun storm that kicked up two massive coronal mass ejections toward Earth during an intense series of solar eruptions.


According to a new research study by astrophysicists, it would appear that when the Sun experiences its most violent explosions, it does so at a massive scale, which sees the entire star trembling under the intensity of the blast. The explosions are all inter-connected through enormous magnetic threads, some of which have been measured to have hundreds of thousands of miles in length. This type of event can be caused by either solar flares, coronal mass ejections or other variety of solar storm, the researchers believe. Furthermore, several of each type of events may take place on our star at the same time, the team said yesterday, December 13.

In the past, solar physicists who have been keeping an eye on the Sun's activity have only looked at how the star behaves in isolated parts, but the new data suggests a more thorough look is advisable. One of the main implications of this paradigm shift is that the forecast of space weather – the sum of all effects the Sun produces in the solar system – will become increasingly difficult at first. But experts bring good news, saying that the advantage would be that the accuracy of the forecasts would also increase considerably, if all phenomena taking place on the Sun are taken into account.

“To predict eruptions, we can no longer focus on the magnetic fields of isolated active regions. We have to know the surface magnetic field of practically the entire Sun,” explains scientist Alan Title. The Stanford University expert is the co-author of a new study detailing the findings, as well as a researcher at the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center, in Palo Alto, California. An August 1 solar event was used as a reference point for the study. The phenomenon saw nearly half of the Sun erupting, in an event that sent shock waves across the entire solar surface.

Additionally, massive hot gas clouds were emitted into space, and all of this because of an event that would have otherwise been classified as localized, experts said at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, which was held in San Francisco. Both the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) space telescopes observed the event in minute detail. They essentially found the first solar tsunami ever discovered.

But “we're not seeing everything” from Earth. “We have to expand our view and look well beyond the region exploding,” says LM Solar and Astrophysics Lab expert Karel Schrijver, also a coauthor of the investigation, Space reports.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/g ... 01213.html

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Same Picture used in the January issue of Popular Science magazine.
Caption reads:
A new observatory affords high-definition views of the sun
In August, violence spread across the earth-facing side of the sun and the newly deployed Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the action. Within 11 hours two eruptions, called corona mass ejections, sent charged particles into space….The SDO, a spacecraft that had launched last February, captured this image of the sun in extreme ultraviolet shortly after the first coronal mass ejection.
In the upper left of the image is a region that experienced the flare that reached level C, the third highest of five levels of intensity and brightness. During the summer, one flare reached the highest intensity level, indicating relatively little solar activity. Astrophysicists have capitalized on this lull to examine details on the suns surface that are usually obscured.
By Lana Birbrair

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Longstanding Mystery of Sun’s Hot Outer Atmosphere Solved


One of the most enduring mysteries in solar physics is why the Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, is millions of degrees hotter than its surface. Now scientists believe they have discovered a major source of hot gas that replenishes the corona: jets of plasma shooting up from just above the Sun's surface.

The finding addresses a fundamental question in astrophysics: how energy is moved from the Sun's interior to create its hot outer atmosphere.

"It's always been quite a puzzle to figure out why the Sun's atmosphere is hotter than its surface," says Scott McIntosh, a solar physicist at the High Altitude Observatory of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., who was involved in the study. "By identifying that these jets insert heated plasma into the Sun's outer atmosphere, we can gain a much greater understanding of that region and possibly improve our knowledge of the Sun's subtle influence on the Earth's upper atmosphere." The research, results of which are published this week in the journal Science, was conducted by scientists from Lockheed Martin's Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory (LMSAL), NCAR, and the University of Oslo. It was supported by NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), NCAR's sponsor. "These observations are a significant step in understanding observed temperatures in the solar corona," says Rich Behnke of NSF's Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, which funded the research. "They provide new insight about the energy output of the Sun and other stars. The results are also a great example of the power of collaboration among university, private industry and government scientists and organizations." The research team focused on jets of plasma known as spicules, which are fountains of plasma propelled upward from near the surface of the Sun into the outer atmosphere.

For decades scientists believed spicules could send heat into the corona. However, following observational research in the 1980s, it was found that spicule plasma did not reach coronal temperatures, and so the theory largely fell out of vogue. "Heating of spicules to millions of degrees has never been directly observed, so their role in coronal heating had been dismissed as unlikely," says Bart De Pontieu, the lead researcher and a solar physicist at LMSAL. In 2007, De Pontieu, McIntosh, and their colleagues identified a new class of spicules that moved much faster and were shorter-lived than the traditional spicules. These "Type II" spicules shoot upward at high speeds, often in excess of 100 kilometers per second, before disappearing. The rapid disappearance of these jets suggested that the plasma they carried might get very hot, but direct observational evidence of this process was missing.

The researchers used new observations from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly on NASA's recently launched Solar Dynamics Observatory and NASA's Focal Plane Package for the Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) on the Japanese Hinode satellite to test their hypothesis. "The high spatial and temporal resolution of the newer instruments was crucial in revealing this previously hidden coronal mass supply," says McIntosh. "Our observations reveal, for the first time, the one-to-one connection between plasma that is heated to millions of degrees and the spicules that insert this plasma into the corona."

The findings provide an observational challenge to the existing theories of coronal heating. During the past few decades, scientists proposed a wide variety of theoretical models, but the lack of detailed observation significantly hampered progress. "One of our biggest challenges is to understand what drives and heats the material in the spicules," says De Pontieu. A key step, according to De Pontieu, will be to better understand the interface region between the Sun's visible surface, or photosphere, and its corona. Another NASA mission, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS), is scheduled for launch in 2012 to provide high-fidelity data on the complex processes and enormous contrasts of density, temperature and magnetic field between the photosphere and corona. Researchers hope this will reveal more about the spicule heating and launch mechanism.

The LMSAL is part of the Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, which designs and develops, tests, manufactures and operates a full spectrum of advanced-technology systems for national security and military, civil government and commercial customers.

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marduk

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Two Simultaneous Major Eruptions on the Sun




Jan. 28th began with not one but two major eruptions on the sun. Separated by more than a million kilometers, the two blasts occurred almost simultaneously on opposite corners of the solar disk….

On the lower left, a magnetic filament became unstable and erupted, hurling a portion of itself into space

On the upper right, departing sunspot 1149 produced an M1-class solar flare and a bright coronal mass ejection (SOHO movie). Is this all a big coincidence? Maybe not. New research shows that eruptions on the sun can “go global” with widely separated blasts unfolding in concert as they trigger and feed off of one another.

These blasts are going to miss in concert, too. Plasma clouds ejected by the two eruptions will sail wide of our planet, one on the left and one on the right. No Earth-effects are expected.

http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?vie ... &year=2011