For the first time, a spacecraft far from Earth has turned and watched a solar storm engulf our planet. The movie, released 08.18.2011 during a NASA press conference, has galvanized solar physicists, who say it could lead to important advances in space weather forecasting. www.nasa.gov svs.gsfc.nasa.gov "The movie sent chills down my spine," says Craig DeForest of the Southwest Researcher Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "It shows a CME swelling into an enormous wall of plasma and then washing over the tiny blue speck of Earth where we live. I felt very small." CMEs are billion-ton clouds of solar plasma launched by the same explosions that spark solar flares. When they sweep past our planet, they can cause auroras, radiation storms, and in extreme cases power outages. Tracking these clouds and predicting their arrival is an important part of space weather forecasting. Still from video of the orbital positions and fields of view of the STEREO When CMEs first leave the sun, they are bright and easy to see. Visibility is quickly reduced, however, as the clouds expand into the void. By the time a typical CME crosses the orbit of Venus, it is a billion times fainter than the surface of the full Moon, and more than a thousand times fainter than the Milky Way. CMEs that reach Earth are almost as gossamer as vacuum itself and correspondingly transparent. "Pulling these faint clouds out of the confusion of starlight and interplanetary dust has been an enormous challenge," says ...
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Space Storm Tracked from Sun to Earth
Space Storm Tracked from Sun to Earth Video Clips. Duration : 5.42 Mins.
For the first time, a spacecraft far from Earth has turned and watched a solar storm engulf our planet. The movie, released 08.18.2011 during a NASA press conference, has galvanized solar physicists, who say it could lead to important advances in space weather forecasting. www.nasa.gov svs.gsfc.nasa.gov "The movie sent chills down my spine," says Craig DeForest of the Southwest Researcher Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "It shows a CME swelling into an enormous wall of plasma and then washing over the tiny blue speck of Earth where we live. I felt very small." CMEs are billion-ton clouds of solar plasma launched by the same explosions that spark solar flares. When they sweep past our planet, they can cause auroras, radiation storms, and in extreme cases power outages. Tracking these clouds and predicting their arrival is an important part of space weather forecasting. Still from video of the orbital positions and fields of view of the STEREO When CMEs first leave the sun, they are bright and easy to see. Visibility is quickly reduced, however, as the clouds expand into the void. By the time a typical CME crosses the orbit of Venus, it is a billion times fainter than the surface of the full Moon, and more than a thousand times fainter than the Milky Way. CMEs that reach Earth are almost as gossamer as vacuum itself and correspondingly transparent. "Pulling these faint clouds out of the confusion of starlight and interplanetary dust has been an enormous challenge," says ...
For the first time, a spacecraft far from Earth has turned and watched a solar storm engulf our planet. The movie, released 08.18.2011 during a NASA press conference, has galvanized solar physicists, who say it could lead to important advances in space weather forecasting. www.nasa.gov svs.gsfc.nasa.gov "The movie sent chills down my spine," says Craig DeForest of the Southwest Researcher Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "It shows a CME swelling into an enormous wall of plasma and then washing over the tiny blue speck of Earth where we live. I felt very small." CMEs are billion-ton clouds of solar plasma launched by the same explosions that spark solar flares. When they sweep past our planet, they can cause auroras, radiation storms, and in extreme cases power outages. Tracking these clouds and predicting their arrival is an important part of space weather forecasting. Still from video of the orbital positions and fields of view of the STEREO When CMEs first leave the sun, they are bright and easy to see. Visibility is quickly reduced, however, as the clouds expand into the void. By the time a typical CME crosses the orbit of Venus, it is a billion times fainter than the surface of the full Moon, and more than a thousand times fainter than the Milky Way. CMEs that reach Earth are almost as gossamer as vacuum itself and correspondingly transparent. "Pulling these faint clouds out of the confusion of starlight and interplanetary dust has been an enormous challenge," says ...
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