Tag Archives: Magnetosphere

NASA Space Place – The Shape Of The Solar System

Posted on June 29, 2017 9:22 pm - - Leave a Comment

Poster’s Note: One of the many under-appreciated aspects of NASA is the extent to which it publishes quality science content for children and Ph.D.’s alike. NASA Space Place has been providing general audience articles for quite some time that are freely available for download and republishing. Your tax dollars help promote science! The following article was provided for reprinting in June, 2017.

By Marcus Woo

2013february2_spaceplaceWhen Stamatios (Tom) Krimigis was selected for the Voyager mission in 1971, he became the team’s youngest principal investigator of an instrument, responsible for the Low Energy Charged Particles (LECP) instrument. It would measure the ions coursing around and between the planets, as well as those beyond. Little did he know, though, that more than 40 years later, both Voyager 1 and 2 still would be speeding through space, continuing to literally reshape our view of the solar system.

The solar system is enclosed in a vast bubble, carved out by the solar wind blowing against the gas of the interstellar medium. For more than half a century, scientists thought that as the sun moved through the galaxy, the interstellar medium would push back on the heliosphere, elongating the bubble and giving it a pointy, comet-like tail similar to the magnetospheres—bubbles formed by magnetic fields—surrounding Earth and most of the other planets

“We in the heliophysics community have lived with this picture for 55 years,” said Krimigis, of The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “And we did that because we didn’t have any data. It was all theory.”

But now, he and his colleagues have the data. New measurements from Voyager and the Cassini spacecraft suggest that the bubble isn’t pointy after all. It’s spherical.

Their analysis relies on measuring high-speed particles from the heliosphere boundary. There, the heated ions from the solar wind can strike neutral atoms coming from the interstellar medium and snatch away an electron. Those ions become neutral atoms, and ricochet back toward the sun and the planets, uninhibited by the interplanetary magnetic field.

Voyager is now at the edge of the heliosphere, where its LECP instrument can detect those solar-wind ions. The researchers found that the number of measured ions rise and fall with increased and decreased solar activity, matching the 11-year solar cycle, showing that the particles are indeed originating from the sun.

Meanwhile, Cassini, which launched 20 years after Voyager in 1997, has been measuring those neutral atoms bouncing back, using another instrument led by Krimigis, the Magnetosphere Imaging Instrument (MIMI). Between 2003 and 2014, the number of measured atoms soared and dropped in the same way as the ions, revealing that the latter begat the former. The neutral atoms must therefore come from the edge of the heliosphere.

If the heliosphere were comet-shaped, atoms from the tail would take longer to arrive at MIMI than those from the head. But the measurements from MIMI, which can detect incoming atoms from all directions, were the same everywhere. This suggests the distance to the heliosphere is the same every which way. The heliosphere, then, must be round, upending most scientists’ prior assumptions.

It’s a discovery more than four decades in the making. As Cassini ends its mission this year, the Voyager spacecraft will continue blazing through interstellar space, their remarkable longevity having been essential for revealing the heliosphere’s shape.

“Without them,” Krimigis says, “we wouldn’t be able to do any of this.”

To teach kids about the Voyager mission, visit the NASA Space Place: spaceplace.nasa.gov/voyager-to-planets

This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Caption: New data from NASA’s Cassini and Voyager show that the heliosphere — the bubble of the sun’s magnetic influence that surrounds the solar system — may be much more compact and rounded than previously thought. The image on the left shows a compact model of the heliosphere, supported by this latest data, while the image on the right shows an alternate model with an extended tail. The main difference is the new model’s lack of a trailing, comet-like tail on one side of the heliosphere. This tail is shown in the old model in light blue. Image credits: Dialynas, et al. (left); NASA (right)

About NASA Space Place

With articles, activities, crafts, games, and lesson plans, NASA Space Place encourages everyone to get excited about science and technology. Visit spaceplace.nasa.gov (facebook|twitter) to explore space and Earth science!

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NASA Space Place – Solar Wind Creates — And Whips — A Magnetic Tail Around Earth

Posted on August 18, 2015 5:51 pm - - Leave a Comment

Poster’s Note: One of the many under-appreciated aspects of NASA is the extent to which it publishes quality science content for children and Ph.D.’s alike. NASA Space Place has been providing general audience articles for quite some time that are freely available for download and republishing. Your tax dollars help promote science! The following article was provided for reprinting in August, 2015.

By Dr. Ethan Siegel

2013february2_spaceplaceAs Earth spins on its axis, our planet’s interior spins as well. Deep inside our world, Earth’s metal-rich core produces a magnetic field that spans the entire globe, with the magnetic poles offset only slightly from our rotational axis. If you fly up to great distances, well above Earth’s surface, you’ll find that this magnetic web, called the magnetosphere, is no longer spherical. It not only bends away from the direction of the sun at high altitudes, but it exhibits some very strange features, all thanks to the effects of our parent star.

The sun isn’t just the primary source of light and heat for our world; it also emits an intense stream of charged particles, the solar wind, and has its own intense magnetic field that extends much farther into space than our own planet’s does. The solar wind travels fast, making the 150 million km (93 million mile) journey to our world in around three days, and is greatly affected by Earth. Under normal circumstances, our world’s magnetic field acts like a shield for these particles, bending them out of the way of our planet and protecting plant and animal life from this harmful radiation.

But for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction: as our magnetosphere bends the solar wind’s ions, these particles also distort our magnetosphere, creating a long magnetotail that not only flattens and narrows, but whips back-and-forth in the onrushing solar wind. The particles are so diffuse that collisions between them practically never occur, but the electromagnetic interactions create waves in Earth’s magnetosphere, which grow in magnitude and then transfer energy to other particles. The charged particles travel within the magnetic field toward both poles, and when they hit the ionosphere region of Earth’s upper atmosphere, they collide with ions of oxygen and nitrogen causing aurora. Missions such as the European Space Agency and NASA Cluster mission have just led to the first accurate model and understanding of equatorial magnetosonic waves, one such example of the interactions that cause Earth’s magnetotail to whip around in the wind like so.

The shape of Earth’s magnetic field not only affects aurorae, but can also impact satellite electronics. Understanding its shape and how the magnetosphere interacts with the solar wind can also lead to more accurate predictions of energetic electrons in near-Earth space that can disrupt our technological infrastructure. As our knowledge increases, we may someday be able to reach one of the holy grails of connecting heliophysics to Earth: forecasting and accurately predicting space weather and its effects. Thanks to the Cluster Inner Magnetosphere Campaign, Van Allen Probes, Mars Odyssey Thermal Emission Imaging System, Magnetospheric Multiscale, and Heliophysics System Observatory missions, we’re closer to this than ever before.

Kids can learn about how solar wind defines the edges of our solar system at NASA Space Place – spaceplace.nasa.gov/interstellar

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Caption: Composite of 25 images of the sun, showing solar outburst/activity over a 365 day period; NASA / Solar Dynamics Observatory / Atmospheric Imaging Assembly / S. Wiessinger; post-processing by E. Siegel.

This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

About NASA Space Place

The goal of the NASA Space Place is “to inform, inspire, and involve children in the excitement of science, technology, and space exploration.” More information is available at their website: http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/

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NASA Space Place – The Cold Never Bothered Me Anyway

Posted on April 1, 2015 4:56 pm - - Leave a Comment

Poster’s Note: One of the many under-appreciated aspects of NASA is the extent to which it publishes quality science content for children and Ph.D.’s alike. NASA Space Place has been providing general audience articles for quite some time that are freely available for download and republishing. Your tax dollars help promote science! The following article was provided for reprinting in April, 2015.

By Dr. Ethan Siegel

2013february2_spaceplaceFor those of us in the northern hemisphere, winter brings long, cold nights, which are often excellent for sky watchers (so long as there’s a way to keep warm!) But there’s often an added bonus that comes along when conditions are just right: the polar lights, or the Aurora Borealis around the North Pole. Here on our world, a brilliant green light often appears for observers at high northern latitudes, with occasional, dimmer reds and even blues lighting up a clear night.

We had always assumed that there was some connection between particles emitted from the Sun and the aurorae, as particularly intense displays were observed around three days after a solar storm occurred in the direction of Earth. Presumably, particles originating from the Sun—ionized electrons and atomic nuclei like protons and alpha particles—make up the vast majority of the solar wind and get funneled by the Earth’s magnetic field into a circle around its magnetic poles. They’re energetic enough to knock electrons off atoms and molecules at various layers in the upper atmosphere—particles like molecular nitrogen, oxygen and atomic hydrogen. And when the electrons fall back either onto the atoms or to lower energy levels, they emit light of varying but particular wavelengths—oxygen producing the most common green signature, with less common states of oxygen and hydrogen producing red and the occasional blue from nitrogen.

But it wasn’t until the 2000s that this picture was directly confirmed! NASA’s Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) satellite (which ceased operations in December 2005) was able to find out how the magnetosphere responded to solar wind changes, how the plasmas were energized, transported and (in some cases) lost, and many more properties of our magnetosphere. Planets without significant magnetic fields such as Venus and Mars have much smaller, weaker aurorae than we do, and gas giant planets like Saturn have aurorae that primarily shine in the ultraviolet rather than the visible. Nevertheless, the aurorae are a spectacular sight in the evening, particularly for observers in Alaska, Canada and the Scandinavian countries. But when a solar storm comes our way, keep your eyes towards the north at night; the views will be well worth braving the cold!

This article was provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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Caption: Auroral overlays from the IMAGE spacecraft. Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory (Goddard Space Flight Center) / Blue Marble team.

About NASA Space Place

The goal of the NASA Space Place is “to inform, inspire, and involve children in the excitement of science, technology, and space exploration.” More information is available at their website: http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/

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Definite Maybe, But It Depends – Aurora Alert For Central New York Friday Night, 12 September 2014

Posted on September 12, 2014 12:16 pm - - Leave a Comment

2014sept12_aurora_kuenzli_big

We can only hope… from Astronomy Picture Of The Day

Greetings fellow astrophiles,

The news has been busier than usual with stellar phenomena the past 24 hours with the report of a solar flare heading right for us. These flares are full of solar plasma that hit our magnetosphere and excite molecules in our upper atmosphere, producing long bands of mostly greens and reds (sometimes blues, depending on the altitude) we know as aurora. Reports have also been coming in that aurora have been brighter and farther south than usual in the last 12 hours, meaning we *might* be in for a show tonight if the CNY skies are clear enough.

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Physics! the Sun-Earth connection, with a flare to boot. From universetoday.com.

All that said, while the fact that “aurora will occur” is reasonably easy to predict based on the known direction of a solar flare, the overall brightness, timing, and the final observable latitudes are not easy to predict (we’re talking meteorological accuracy here, folks).

1. Brightness – The beautiful pictures you often see of aurora are, like the high-quality deep space images from Hubble, not exactly what you’d see if you were there in person. The strong green and red colors in aurora images are often produced with longer-exposure photography using DSLR cameras. This means that, to see them best, you need to be away from lit locations where your eyes can adjust to dark surroundings to pick up that much more green and red. Those attempting to see aurora from Syracuse are more likely to confuse the bright parking lights from DestinyUSA and St. Joseph’s with aurora. Having all of the bright city lights to your South IS THE KEY – so consider driving as far North as you believe to be reasonable to improve your chances of seeing aurora.

2. Timing – There were reports of aurora in Arizona last night. Arizona. That’s quite a ways South! That, unfortunately, can mean bad news for CNY observing. Solar flares are not continuous streams of plasma from the Sun – you can think of them more like a fireball. That is, there’ll be a little bit of heat (aurora activity) when the front edge of the fireball interacts with our magnetosphere, then the aurora will really brighten when the core of the fireball (and the most plasma) interacts with our magnetosphere, then the fireball will taper off and the aurora will dim. The fact that aurora were visible in Arizona last night might mean that a strong piece of the front edge (hopefully not the core, but that remains to be seen) had just hit Earth, which might mean the greatest intensity might occur during our afternoon and early evening tonight – which means we won’t see any activity (because the Sun is filling our sky with scattered blue photons). It is tough to know if we’ll still be in the throes of high activity or not until we see it tonight.

3. Latitude – For the most part, aurora are localized to a band around 15 degrees away from Earth’s geomagnetic poles, placing the peak of this phenomena usually in the Arctic (and Antarctic, let’s not forget!) zone – which is why most of the really good aurora pictures you see reveal a considerable amount of snow and ice on the ground (also made possible by the long exposures of the DSLR cameras). When large flares hammer on Earth’s magnetosphere, this peak region can slide in the direction of the equator, making aurora visible to more of Canada and the US. At peak hammering, we can see aurora in CNY no problem. But, again, timing and location are everything in this case – if the timing is just right, you’re still likely better off driving North for better views.

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The predictions for tonight from accuweather.com (as for 11:30 p.m. Friday)

What To Check Tonight:

2014sept12_NorthAmerica_5Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks – When you google “aurora prediction,” this is the first site you get. That should tell you something about how much others trust it. Most of the images you might see in local news reports likely come from this website. To use this site, click on THIS LINK, then scroll down on your left-hand side to the “Select a Map” box, then click on the North America map. You’ll get an estimate of the likelihood of seeing aurora for our area, then more detail about timings and what it is that’s causing the specific aurora (Click HERE for tonight’s updates).

Aurorasaurus – A site that absolutely needs to be used by more people. This is a crowdsource’d aurora alert system, where you can see if others in your area are reporting aurora or YOU can report seeing aurora to coax someone else outside. The site will get more interesting for CNY as we approach evening, but I would give this site a good look tonight to see if anyone else in our area is having good luck to the North.

Syracuse.com – Glenn Coin already gave us one update this morning and I suspect updates will follow as prime observing time approaches and we (scientists and citizens together) have more to say about what is or isn’t visible. So, keep track of your favorite local news sources – or be the news source and report to them if you end up seeing anything!

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