Stereo Captures Eruption and CME

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    Tracking Solar Eruptions

    Feb. 5th, 2015
    (updated May 3rd, 2023)

    Explore how scientists trace the journey of material exploding from the sun. || Two main types of explosions occur on the sun: solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Unlike the energy and X-rays produced in a solar flare—which travels at the speed of light and can reach Earth in eight minutes—coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, are giant, expanding clouds of solar material that take one to three days to reach our planet. When a CME blasts off the sun, scientists rely on instruments called coronagraphs to track their progress. Coronagraphs block out the bright light of the sun so that the much fainter material in the solar atmosphere—including CMEs—can be seen in the surrounding space. NASA's STEREO mission consists of two spacecraft, each equipped with two coronagraphs (COR 1, COR 2) and an extreme ultraviolet camera (EUV) that together help scientists model the journey of a CME from the sun's surface into its atmosphere and beyond. Watch the video for views of an eruption seen by the STEREO Ahead spacecraft. ||

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    NASA’s New Solar Scope Is Ready For Balloon Flight

    Aug. 23rd, 2019
    (updated May 3rd, 2023)

    NASA and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, or KASI, are getting ready to test a new way to see the Sun, high over the New Mexico desert. A pearlescent balloon — large enough to hug a football field — is scheduled to take flight no earlier than Aug. 26, 2019, carrying beneath it a solar scope called BITSE. BITSE is a coronagraph, a kind of telescope that blocks the Sun’s bright face in order to reveal its dimmer atmosphere, called the corona. Short for Balloon-borne Investigation of Temperature and Speed of Electrons in the corona, BITSE seeks to explain how the Sun spits out the solar wind. ||

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    Discovering the Sun’s Mysteriously Hot Atmosphere

    July 25th, 2018
    (updated May 3rd, 2023)

    Something mysterious is going on at the Sun. In defiance of all logic, its atmosphere gets much, much hotter the farther it stretches from the Sun’s blazing surface.Temperatures in the corona — the tenuous, outermost layer of the solar atmosphere — spike upwards of 2 million degrees Fahrenheit, while just 1,000 miles below, the underlying surface simmers at a balmy 10,000 F. How the Sun manages this feat remains one of the greatest unanswered questions in astrophysics; scientists call it the coronal heating problem. A new, landmark mission, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe — scheduled to launch no earlier than Aug. 11, 2018 — will fly through the corona itself, seeking clues to its behavior and offering the chance for scientists to solve this mystery.From Earth, as we see it in visible light, the Sun’s appearance — quiet, unchanging — belies the life and drama of our nearest star. Its turbulent surface is rocked by eruptions and intense bursts of radiation, which hurl solar material at incredible speeds to every corner of the solar system. This solar activity can trigger space weather events that have the potential to disrupt radio communications, harm satellites and astronauts, and at their most severe, interfere with power grids.Above the surface, the corona extends for millions of miles and roils with plasma, gases superheated so much that they separate into an electric flow of ions and free electrons. Eventually, it continues outward as the solar wind, a supersonic stream of plasma permeating the entire solar system. And so, it is that humans live well within the extended atmosphere of our Sun. To fully understand the corona and all its secrets is to understand not only the star that powers life on Earth, but also, the very space around us.Read more on NASA.gov. ||

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