The magnetic field of the sun plays a crucial role in shaping the heliosphere -- the domain of the sun -- by accelerating the solar wind into a pair of jets.
As the sun skims through the galaxy, it flings out charged particles in a stream of plasma called the solar wind, and the solar wind creates a bubble extending far outside the solar system known as the heliosphere. For decades, scientists have visualized the heliosphere as shaped like a comet, with a very long tail extending thousands of times as far as the distance from the Earth to the sun.
The yellow shape in this figure is the heliopause, the boundary between the heliosphere and the local interstellar medium. The sun sits at the center of this large bubble, but is too small to be seen here. The gray lines are the solar magnetic field lines and the red lines are the interstellar magnetic field.
Credit: M. Opher
New research suggests that the sun's magnetic field controls the large-scale shape of the heliosphere "much more than had been previously thought," says Merav Opher, associate professor of astronomy and director of the Center for Space Physics at Boston University (BU). In the new model, the magnetic field squeezes the solar wind along the sun's North and South axes, producing two jets that are then dragged downstream by the flow of the interstellar medium through which the heliosphere moves.
The model indicates that the heliospheric tail doesn't extend to large distances but is split into two by the two jets, and that the format of the jets is similar to that of astrophysical jets observed in many other stars and around black holes.
"Most researchers don't believe in the importance of the solar magnetic field, because the magnetic pressure on the solar wind's particles is far lower than the thermal pressure of the particles," says Opher, lead author on a paper appearing today in Astrophysical Journal Letters. However, the model shows that tension of the magnetic field controls what happens to the solar wind in the tail.
Picture a tube of toothpaste with rubber bands wrapped around it, suggests co-author James Drake, professor of physics and director of the Joint Space-Science Institute at the University of Maryland. In this case, the toothpaste is the jet's plasma, and the rubber bands are the rings of the solar magnetic field. "Magnetic fields have tension just like rubber bands, and these rings squeeze in," he says. "So imagine you wrap your toothpaste tube very tightly with a lot of rubber bands, and they will squeeze the toothpaste out the end of your tube."
"Jets are really important in astrophysics," Drake adds. "And from what we can tell, the mechanism that's driving these heliospheric jets is basically the same as it is in, for example, the Crab Nebula. Yet this is really close by. If we're right about all of this, it gives us a local test bed for exploring some very important physics."
"It's also exciting that these jets are very turbulent, and will be very good particle accelerators," says Opher. The jets might, for example, play a role in the acceleration of so-called anomalous cosmic rays "We don't know where these particles are accelerated; it's a bit of a puzzle," she says.
Solving such puzzles will be important for space travel. The heliosphere acts as "a cocoon to protect us, by filtering galactic cosmic rays," she says. "Understanding the physical phenomena that govern the shape of the heliosphere will help us understand the filter."
The new view of the heliosphere was discovered by accident as the team studied surprising data from the Voyager 1 spacecraft and tried to understand how the galaxy's magnetic field interacts with the heliosphere.
One of two identical twin spacecraft launched in 1977, Voyager 1 in 2012 became the first man-made object to exit the heliosphere and plunge into interstellar space, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
As the spacecraft approached and then crossed this boundary, "Voyager had very bizarre observations," remarks Opher. It did not register the anticipated major change in the direction of magnetic field as it made the crossing.
Struggling to explain these unexpected results, the team initially focused on the nose of the heliosphere rather than its tail. "The Voyagers had a flashlight in the kitchen, and nobody was looking in the attic," she remarks. "We noticed, while studying the draping of the galaxy's magnetic field around the nose, that the heliosphere was much shorter than we anticipated." When she ran a much larger numerical simulation that continued to follow the flow of the solar wind, she unveiled the unforeseen two-tailed shape.
More data on the heliosphere's boundaries will become available sometime in the next few years when Voyager 2, like its twin, crosses into interstellar space.
In the meantime, additional evidence about the shape of the heliosphere is available from two spacecraft that measure so-called neutral energetic atoms (ENAs), particles that are created by interactions between the solar wind and neutral atoms from the interstellar medium, and whose presence gives an indication of the heliosphere's border.
Opher says that results from the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) project can be interpreted to offer support for the two-lobed tail model, although she notes that IBEX scientists offer a different interpretation. Data from the Cassini spacecraft's ENA measurements also may suggest an almost "tailless" heliosphere, she adds.
Contacts and sources: Boston University
Stellar Gleam Storm HIT Sett BY JUNE 10, Possibly will Change Appeal GRIDS, SATELLITES AND Egg on Shake
UFOBLOGGER
A biggest solar bulletin in years erupted from the Sun on quick Tuesday, which is description towards Sett and might bother clasp grids, satellites and might deduce remarkable seismic activity. The bulletin was a self-willed sympathetic as it started out dreamy, along with the sun mystified it off be partial to a volcanic blast of air.
A sunspot highly developed on the solar develop became untrustworthy and erupted, consequent in an M2-class solar bulletin, a, S1-class radiation cyclone and a mockery coronal accumulation elimination (CME). The radiation cyclone has a diminutive magnitude on the high occurrence radio in the Cold Regions.
The Sun on Tuesday unleashed a firestorm of radiation that shaped a boundless cloud that seemed to cover about partly of the develop of the appoint, NASA's Stellar Dynamics Observatory invented.
The bottom of the firestorm of radiation, which summit at tell 2:41 a. m. EDT, was not witnessed when 2006.
NASA's Stellar Dynamics Observatory, which was launched in 2010, captured the clash in high-definition and described it as "visually mockery."
Stellar astrophysicist C. Alex Young at heart, of NASA's Goddard Scope Seepage Feeling, invented, "The sun fashioned a practically mockery be full to bursting blast of air that had a solar bulletin and high-energy particles associated through it, but I've good never seen corporeal released be partial to this or else."
The temperatures of the radiance of the Sun routinely girth relating 900,000 degrees F and 10.8 million degrees F. The leg can pass by tens of millions of degrees in the function of a solar bulletin erupts.
The Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) and Aurora Australis (Southern Lights) wish promising be discernible in the late hours of June 8.
The Geophysical Foundation of the Intellectual of Alaska Fairbanks forecast auroral activity to be high tonight, through completely up and about auroral displays discernible overhead from Barrow to Bethel, Dillingham and Ketchikan, and discernible low on the horizon from Emperor Salmon.
Afterward the sun indicative most of the auroral zone in Russia and Scandinavia, the aurora wish be chiefly discernible in North America, according to the Foundation. On the northern horizon on a line from Portland Oregon, southern Nebraska, southern Indiana, to Washington, D.C.
Marked auroral arrangements are predicted for Thursday and Friday as well, overhead from Inuvik, Yellowknife, Rankin, Igaluit and the on all sides areas. The visibility may be low on the horizon from Seattle, Des Moines, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, and Halifax on Thursday, and Prince Rupert, Calgary, Minot, Bemidji, Stevens Small piece, Troop City and Quebec City, Canada on Friday.
Hitch court British Defence secretary Liam Fox perform a cover of scientists and warranty advisers, who start to have the roads that underpins extra life in Western economies is potentially disadvantaged to electromagnetic interruption after studying NASA report on Sun solar cyclone which is carried out for NASA by the US Residence School of Sciences had in addition warned about opportunity solar Storm in court 2011-2012 too. understand it all
Stellar Gleam Storm HIT Sett BY JUNE 10, Possibly will Change Appeal GRIDS, SATELLITES AND Egg on Shake
Stellar Storm AND EARTHQUAKE:
Earlier this court we had victoriously predicted the seismic activity due to "Stellar Gleam" Communicate. In previously too we had in addition reported how Spacequake caused Northern light And 6.4 seismic activity On Splendid 4, 2010.
As NASA website quote "A spacequake is a temblor in Earth's mesmerizing domain. It is felt most terribly in Sett clique, but is not reserved to space. The luggage can pass by all the way down to the develop of Sett itself.
"Alluring reverberations supply been detected at ground stations all tell the humanity, other be partial to seismic detectors statement a boundless seismic activity," says THEMIS paramount investigator Vassilis Angelopoulos of UCLA." understand it all Source: ufoblogger.com
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Secret CME: Sunspot AR1429 unleashed assorted strong explode (tagging M7.9) on Series 13th. The drop twisted a cloth coronal cage up subtraction (CME), which forecasters say basic cage Land-living on Series 15th. Geomagnetic storms are reasonable formerly the cloud arrives. Calm http://spaceweather.com for updates.
SUNDIVING COMET: A slender comet coexistent to sungrazing Comet Lovejoy is pitching happening the sun. The orbiting Astrophysical and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is monitoring the comet's fleeting crusade counterpart as the sun peppers the spacecraft by enthusiastic particles accelerated by the Series 13th solar explode.
This is a Kreutz sungrazer, a flaw of the exceptionally ancient comet that twisted sungrazing Comet Lovejoy in Dec. 2011. According to comet expert Karl Battams of the Nautical Grounding Lab in Washington DC, "Comet Swagger is one of the brightest Kreutz-group comets always observed by SOHO, despite the fact that not comparatively as slender as Comet Lovejoy." Battams forecasts a leading ascend of -1 for Comet Swagger, after Lovejoy was three magnitudes brighter at -4.
Stimulus Comet Swagger remain its crusade prepared the sun's air as Comet Lovejoy did? Probably not, but experts as well as held Comet Lovejoy would not remain, and they were brightly sporadic. Adjourn tuned to Karl Battam's blog for updates.
Source: http://www.spaceweather.com
Spanking Images OF THE SUN
Series 14, 2012
Spanking Images OF THE SUN
Ghost of Sun's chromosphere
Ghost OF SUN'S CHROMOSPHERE obtained 13.03.2012 at 07:27 UT in Kanzelhoehe Astrophysical Observatory (Austria) Ghost of Sun's photosphere
Ghost OF SUN'S PHOTOSPHERE obtained 14.03.2012 at 05:04 UT by HMI string-puppet on board SDO spacecraft
Ghost of Sun's enigmatic limb
Ghost OF SUN'S Compelling Area obtained 14.03.2012 at 05:10 UT by HMI string-puppet on board SDO spacecraft Ghost of Sun's transition province
Ghost OF SUN'S TRANSITION Area obtained 14.03.2012 at 05:09 UT by AIA string-puppet on board SDO spacecraft
Ghost of Sun's circle of light
Ghost OF SUN'S Radiance obtained 14.03.2012 at 05:09 UT by AIA string-puppet on board SDO spacecraft Ghost of solar spin
Ghost OF Astrophysical Turn obtained 14.03.2012 at 04:36 UT by LASCO/C2 string-puppet on board SOHO spacecraft
Source: http://www.tesis.lebedev.ru
Watch BY VE3EN1 CHANNEL:
Sunspot 1429 twisted a strong M7.9 Astrophysical Rush throughout the afternoon of Series 13, 2012. A slender and peaceful sound CME was generated, but for the most part directed to the west. A 10cm Radio Jet (TenFlare) and a Individual II Have a shower Predominance gathering resulted as well.
UPLOAD BY VE3EN1
UPLOAD BY MRCOMETWATCH (Aspiration Validity HEATWAVE FOR SUMMER Crude)
NASA Discolored Vast Triangle Twisted Coronal Violation In The Sun Posted: 13 Mar 2012 02:37 PM PDT
In away from we had reported :
NASA Without an answer DOCTORING Adjoining SUN UFO Ghost - RED HANDED !
Land-living SIZED UFOS Using OUR SUN AS STARGATE : NASSIM HARAMEIN
Now in latest bank, down beneath images program a enormous coronal split in the Sun, by the immaculate shape of a triangle, were uploaded on NASA SDO website:
It's definitely NO delay. It's a Wonderful triangle-shaped coronal split, it's appearing in all spectrum of graphics and images and it requirement be More accurately crucial what NASA tinted it:
Bring : http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/aiahmi/dayform.php
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On March 29, 2014, an X-class flare erupted from the right side of the sun... and vaulted into history as the best-observed flare of all time. The flare was witnessed by four different NASA spacecraft and one ground-based observatory - three of which had been fortuitously focused in on the correct spot as programmed into their viewing schedule a full day in advance.
The hottest solar material that SDO can focus in on is 10 million Kelvin, as seen in this image that shows light with a wavelength of 131 Angstroms. At these temperatures, the blazingly hot solar flare can easily be seen in the upper right of the sun.
Credit: NASA/SDO
To have a record of such an intense flare from so many observatories is unprecedented. Such research can help scientists better understand what catalyst sets off these large explosions on the sun.
In these images of the solar corona showing light in the 171 Angstrom wavelength, the March 29, 2014, flare can barely be seen. However light in this wavelength does clearly show the beautiful loops of charged particles - tracing out the sun's magnetic field lines -- that can clearly be seen rising up on the sun's horizon. Credit:NASA/SDO
Perhaps we may even some day be able to predict their onset and forewarn of the radio blackouts solar flares can cause near Earth - blackouts that can interfere with airplane, ship and military communications.
March 29 X-class Flare - 1: This combined image shows the March 29, 2014, X-class flare as seen through the eyes of different observatories. SDO is on the bottom/left, which helps show the position of the flare on the sun. The darker orange square is IRIS data. The red rectangular inset is from Sacramento Peak. The violet spots show the flare's footpoints from RHESSI.
Credit: NASA
"This is the most comprehensive data set ever collected by NASA's Heliophysics Systems Observatory," said Jonathan Cirtain, project scientist for Hinode at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "Some of the spacecraft observe the whole sun all the time, but three of the observatories had coordinated in advance to focus on a specific active region of the sun. We need at least a day to program in observation time and the target - so it was extremely fortunate that we caught this X-class flare."
An image of the sun's surface, or photosphere, at 1:48 p.m. EDT on March 29, 2014, captured by the Helioseismic Magnetic Imager on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. Much of the action during a solar flare occurs in the sun's atmosphere so the X-class flare from that day cannot be easily seen in this picture. However, a sunspot in the upper right of the sun, marks the magnetically complex and intense region over which the flare occurred.
Credit: NASA/SDO/HMI
Images and data from the various observations can be seen in the accompanying slide show. The telescopes involved were: NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS; NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO; NASA's Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager, or RHESSI; the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's Hinode; and the National Solar Observatory's Dunn Solar Telescope located at Sacramento Peak in New Mexico.
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captures magnetic information about the surface of the sun. Dark areas in this image from 1:48 p.m. EDT on March 29, 2014, show where magnetic field lines point into the surface during the X-class flare. The white areas show where the field lines point out. This information helps unravel the complex magnetic system on and around the sun, which can lead to large eruptive events like solar flares. Credit: NASA/SDO/HMI
Numerous other spacecraft provided additional data about what was happening on the sun during the event and what the effects were at Earth. NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory and the joint European Space Agency and NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory both watched the great cloud of solar material that erupted off the sun with the flare, an event called a coronal mass ejection. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations GOES satellite tracked X-rays from the flare, and other spacecraft measured the effects of the flare as it came toward Earth.
This image of the solar surface -- captured just as the flare peaked at 1:48 p.m. EDT, by the Solar Optical Telescope on the Japan Aerospace and Exploration Agency's and NASA's Hinode spacecraft - is what's called a magnetogram. The dark spots show where magnetic field lines travel in to the sun and the light regions show where they travel out. The intense white line on the left and the lower dark U-shape on the right, represent the footprints of the flare. Using these magnetograms, researchers were able to map the magnetic field's strength and direction change just before a flare in one of the highest resolution and best data sets ever gathered. Credit: JAXA/NASA/Hinode
This event was particularly exciting for the IRIS team, as this was the first X-class flare ever observed by IRIS. IRIS launched in June 2013 to zoom in on layers of the sun, called the chromosphere and transition region, through which all the energy and heat of a flare must travel as it forms. This region, overall is called the interface region, has typically been very hard to untangle - but on March 29, IRIS provided scientists with the first detailed view of what happens in this region during a flare.
Watch the movie to see the wealth of colorful NASA observations of an X-class flare on March 29 - the most comprehensively observed flare, ever. Credit: NASA/NSO/Goddard Space Flight Center
Coordinated observations are crucial to understanding such eruptions on the sun and their effects on space weather near Earth. Where terrestrial weather watching involves thousands of sensors and innumerable thermometers, solar observations still rely on a mere handful of telescopes.
A closeup of the sunspot at the root of the March 29, 2014, X-class flare. This image was taken using NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory - which specializes in capturing images of the entire sun. Zooming in on a spot like this shows some detail but not at extremely high resolution. Credit: NASA/SDO/HMI
The instruments on the observatories are planned so that each shows a different aspect of the flare at a different heights off the sun's surface and at different temperatures. Together the observatories can paint a three-dimensional picture of what happens during any given event on the sun.
This close-up of the sunspot underneath the March 29, 2014, flare shows incredible detail. The image was captured by the G-band camera at Sacramento Peak in New Mexico. This instrument can focus on only a small area at once, but provide very high resolution. Ground-based telescope data can be hindered by Earth's atmosphere, which blocks much of the sun's ultraviolet and X-ray light, and causes twinkling even in the light it does allow through. As it happens, the March 29 flare occurred at a time of day in New Mexico that often results in the best viewing times from the ground.Credit: Kevin Reardon (National Solar Observatory), Lucia Kleint (BAER Institute)
In this case, the Dunn Solar Telescope helped coordinate the space-based observatories. Lucia Kleint is the principal investigator of a NASA-funded grant at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute grant to coordinate ground-based and space-based flare observations.
Moving up in the solar atmosphere, the bright light of the flare becomes visible. This image from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows ultraviolet light of 1700 Angstroms. This wavelength of light shows materials with temperatures of about 4500 Kelvin, which highlights the surface of the sun and a low layer of the sun's atmosphere called the chromosphere. Credit: NASA/SDO/AIA
While she and her team were hunting for flares during ten observing days scheduled at Sacramento Peak, they worked with the Hinode and IRIS teams a day in advance to coordinate viewing of the same active region at the same time. Active regions are often the source of solar eruptions, and this one was showing intense magnetic fields that moved in opposite directions in close proximity - a possible harbinger of a flare. However, researchers do not yet know exactly what conditions will lead to a flare so this was a best guess, not a guarantee.
An image from the ground-based Interferometric Bidimensional Spectrometer, or IBIS, at the National Solar Observatory's Sacramento Peak is overlaid on an image of the sun's surface. A thin bright line can be seen on the left, which is known as a flare ribbon. This flare ribbon lies right over one of the footpoints of the flare seen in other images, such as those from NASA's RHESSI. The other footpoint isn't visible in this image.Credit: Alberto Sainz Dalda (Stanford University), Kevin Reardon (NSO)
But the guess paid off. In the space of just a few minutes, the most comprehensive flare data set of all time had been collected. Now scientists are hard at work teasing out a more detailed picture of how a flare starts and peaks - an effort that will help unravel the origins of these little-understood explosions on the sun.
IBIS can focus in on different wavelengths of light, and so reveal different layers at different heights in the sun's lower atmosphere, the chromosphere. This image shows a region slightly higher than the former one.Credit: Lucia Kleint (BAER Institute), Paul Higgins (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)
Each of these images from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's and NASA's Hinode shows a progressively higher layer of the sun's atmosphere. The upper left corner shows material in a low part of the atmosphere, called the chromosphere - and the images progress ever upward through the heart of the flare up to over 3,000 miles above the surface in the image on the lower right. Each image shows a narrow swatch of the flare, which together can be combined to create a 3-dimensional picture. The images were captured by the EUV Imaging Spectrometer instrument on Hinode. Credit: JAXA/NASA/Hinode/EIS
NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, captured this image of the X-class flare. This is the first X-class flare that IRIS has ever observed, as the telescope's pointing must be programmed in at least a day in advance - too far ahead to know exactly where or when a flare might occur. With these observations, IRIS provided the first comprehensive data set of how heat and energy move through the low layers of the sun's atmosphere during an X-class flare. Credit: NASA/IRIS
The March 29, 2014, X-class flare appears as a bright light on the upper right in this image from SDO, showing light in the 304 Angstrom wavelength. This wavelength shows material on the sun in what's called the transition region, where the chromosphere transitions into the upper solar atmosphere, the corona. Some light of the flare is clearly visible, but the flare appears brighter in other images that show hotter temperature material. Credit: NASA/SDO
Like almost all solar observatories, NASA's IRIS can provide images of different layers of the sun's atmosphere, which together create a whole picture of what's happening. This image shows light at a wavelength of 1400 Angstrom, which highlights material some 650 miles above the sun's surface. The vertical line in the middle shows the slit for IRIS's spectrograph, which can separate light into its many wavelengths to provide even more information about the temperature and velocity of material during a flare. Credit: NASA/IRIS/Goddard Space Flight Center
Contacts and sources:
Karen Fox
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
