Astro Blog

By Paul Voosen , Science.  Excerpt: When violent eruptions from the Sun slam into Earth’s magnetic field, they do more than paint aurorae across the night sky. They can scramble the electronics of satellites and induce powerful ground currents that knock out electrical grids. It’s been estimated that a one-in-a-100-year solar storm like the 1859 Carrington Event could cause more than $3 trillion of damage to the power grid alone. ...In a study published today in Space Weather , the researchers describe a provocative proposal called “StormWall”: a fleet of satellites that would release hundreds of tons of gases into space just before a solar storm strikes Earth. Computer simulations suggest the artificial cloud could cut the intensity of a major solar storm by half or more....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/radical-proposal-would-block-solar-storms-orbital-airbag . 

By Sarah Stanley , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Spectacular aurorae dance and shimmer nearly continuously at Jupiter’s poles. ...Sometimes, Jupiter’s aurorae grow much brighter for hours or days at a time. ... clarifying the solar wind’s role  in any one brightening event would require taking simultaneous measurements of Jupiter’s magnetosphere and aurorae and their relationship with the solar wind—a difficult undertaking. ...NASA’s  Juno mission  has made such simultaneous measurements possible.  Giles et al.  used data... from two of Juno’s onboard instruments...as Juno neared Jupiter in its elliptical orbit on 6 December, the spacecraft was overtaken by the outer edge of the shrinking magnetosphere before later reentering it closer to Jupiter. ...Another of Juno’s instruments, its ultraviolet spectrograph, measured the aurora’s peak power at this time to be 12 terawatts—6 times its baseline power level. ...the researchers concluded that the powerful auroral d...

https://engineering.berkeley.edu/news/2024/01/small-solar-sails-could-be-the-next-giant-leap-for-interplanetary-space-exploration By Marni Ellery, Berkeley Engineering.  Interview excerpt: ...a team of Berkeley researchers [...proposed] to build a fleet of low-cost, autonomous spacecraft, each weighing only 10 grams and propelled by nothing more than the pressure of solar radiation. These miniaturized solar sails could potentially visit thousands of near-Earth asteroids and comets, capturing high-resolution images and collecting samples. ...They describe their work, the Berkeley Low-cost Interplanetary Solar Sail (BLISS) project, in a  study published  in the journal Acta Astronautica. The BLISS project brings together researchers from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and the Department of Mechanical Engineering, as well as the  Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center  and the  Space Sciences Laboratory . Their work builds on other...

https://www.science.org/content/article/peak-solar-activity-arriving-sooner-expected-reaching-levels-not-seen-20-years By ZACK SAVITSKY , Science.  Excerpt: In 2019, as the Sun approached a minimum in its 11-year cycle of magnetic activity, a dozen scientists assembled for a traditional exercise: forecasting the next peak. Now, a few years into the Sun’s resurgence, it’s becoming clear that the official prediction from the panel, convened by NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the International Space Environment Service (ISES), missed the mark. The Sun’s activity has already surpassed the forecast, reaching levels not seen in 20 years, and solar maximum may arrive within the next year, months ahead of its presumed schedule.... 

https://eos.org/articles/magnetic-tangles-drive-solar-wind By  atthew R. Francis , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Though the  effects  of solar wind are well documented, what  causes  it has been a mystery for more than 50 years. Now, thanks to a solar close-up, some researchers think the energy behind the flow of particles comes from the Sun’s own magnetic fields snapping together. The process, known as reconnection, may illuminate not only solar wind but winds from other stars as well as the behavior of comets and planetary atmospheres. In part to solve the solar wind mystery—and perhaps learn ways to spot solar storms before they form—researchers developed NASA’s  Parker Solar Probe , which launched in 2018 and has been flying in ever-closer orbits to the Sun. ...Reconnection occurs in plasmas when magnetic fields pointing in opposite directions cancel out, rapidly dumping their energy into the surrounding electrons and ions. A simplified picture would be takin...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/06/07/parker-solar-probe-flies-into-the-fast-solar-wind-and-finds-its-source/ By  Robert Sanders , UC Berkeley News.  Excerpt: NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has flown close enough to the sun to detect the fine structure of the solar wind close to where it is generated at the sun’s surface, revealing details that are lost as the wind exits the corona as a uniform blast of charged particles. It’s like seeing jets of water emanating from a showerhead through the blast of water hitting you in the face. In a paper to be published this week in the journal  Nature , a team of scientists led by Stuart D. Bale, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and James Drake of the University of Maryland-College Park, report that the Parker Solar Probe has detected streams of high-energy particles that match the supergranulation flows within coronal holes, which suggests that these are the regions where the so-called “fast” solar wi...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/09/science/spacex-satellites-storm.html By  Robin George Andrews , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Over the past three years, SpaceX has deployed thousands of satellites into low-Earth orbit as part of its business to beam high-speed internet service from space. But the company’s latest deployment of 49 new satellites after a Feb. 3 launch did not go as planned. As a consequence of a geomagnetic storm triggered by a recent outburst of the sun, up to 40 of 49 newly launched Starlink satellites have been knocked out of commission. They are in the process of re-entering Earth’s atmosphere, where they will be incinerated. ...The sun has an 11-year-long cycle in which it oscillates between hyperactive and quiescent states. Presently, it is ramping up to its peak, which has been forecast to  arrive around 2025 . This recent solar paroxysm was relatively moderate by the sun’s standards. “I have every confidence that we’re going to see an extreme ev...