Solar Wind Animations

Conceptual AnimationArtist interpretation of flying by the Earth, Sun and Heliopause.Credit: NASA Goddard/CILJonathan North

Scientific VisualizationThis movie shows the particle flow around the Earth as the CME strikes.Credit: NASA Goddard/SVS/Greg Shirah, Horace Mitchell, Tom Bridgman

Conceptual AnimationExactly where the solar wind transitions from a rotational flow to a perfectly radial flow has implications for how the Sun sheds energy. NASA's Parker Solar Probe located a transition region in the solar wind's flow that point may help us better understand the lifecycle of other stars or the formation of protoplanetary disks, the dense disks of gas and dust around young stars that eventually coalesce into planets.Credit: NASA Goddard/CIL/Jonathan North

Conceptual AnimationObserved near Earth, the solar wind is a relatively uniform flow of plasma, with occasional turbulent tumbles. But by that point it’s traveled over ninety million miles — and the signatures of the Sun's exact mechanisms for heating and accelerating the solar wind are wiped out. Closer to the solar wind's source, NASA's Parker Solar Probe saw a much different picture: a complicated, active system.Credit: NASA Goddard/CIL/Adriana Manrique Gutierrez

Conceptual AnimationThis animation shows energetic particles from the Sun interacting with Earth’s magnetic field, called the magnetosphere. The magnetosphere is another one of Earth’s fundamental global fields. It originates from the churning of hot, liquid metals in our planet’s core and extends thousands of miles out into space. Our magnetosphere protects us from much of the radiation we encounter in the universe, including the Sun’s energetic particles (shown here coming from the left side of the animation). When these particles run into the magnetosphere, they tend to flow around it like air deflected by the nose of a supersonic jet.Credit: NASA Goddard/CIL/Wes Buchanan, Krystofer Kim

Conceptual AnimationThis artist’s concept shows Earth’s magnetosphere immersed in the so-called “fast” solar wind, which averages between about 300 - 500 miles per second (approx. 500 - 800 kilometers per second). The fast solar wind originates from coronal holes: darker, lower density patches of the Sun’s atmosphere where the Sun’s magnetic field lines connect to interplanetary space, allowing solar material to escape out in a high-speed stream. Coronal holes are more common closer to the Sun’s poles but can occasionally appear on any area of the Sun. When a fast stream of solar wind reaches Earth, it can compress Earth’s magnetosphere like a windsock blowing in the wind.Credit: NASA Goddard/CIL/Bailee DesRocher

Conceptual AnimationThis artist’s concept shows a representative state of Earth’s magnetosphere immersed in the so-called “slow” solar wind, which averages between about 180 - 300 miles per second (approx. 300 - 500 kilometers per second). The slow solar wind originates from coronal streamers and other solar features most commonly found around the Sun’s equator, which make the slow solar wind the typical state of the solar wind along the equatorial plane in which the planets orbit.Credit: NASA Goddard/CIL/Bailee DesRocher

Conceptual AnimationA conceptual animation showing solar wind interacting with Earth's magnetic field and causing atmospheric loss at the polar cusps.Credit: NASA Goddard/CIL/Josh Masters