Solar Monitor

Introduction

Many of us are space fans to one degree or another. We watch the dwindling number of manned space flights, we read the latest science and discoveries and we sometimes enjoy a science fiction book or movie to enjoy what might be our future. What you might not know is that there are more resources for you to enjoy than you may be aware!

Current Solar Activity
Solar X-rays	Geomagnetic Field
Current SOHO Solar Imagery	Solar Wind
From n3kl.org	From Rice University

Background

The sun has powered our solar system from the beginning. What you might not realize is that it operates on an eleven year cycle where at the eleven-year peak, we reach Solar Maximum - the period of the most sun-spot activity. Solar Max was in 2000, but this max was somewhat quiet but it made that up in 2004 and 2005. So why do we care about sun spots?

There are plenty of websites with the science behind sun spots, but what you want to know is that when a sun spot is aimed at Earth, it acts as a lens to focus greater levels of radiation. These same sunspots can fire a flare (a coronal mass ejection or CME) at us. Contrary to popular assumption, CME's do not travel at the speed of light, so we can see them, but it can take days to reach Earth. The particles in the CME can have some interesting side effects on our little planet. So if these events have been happening for quite some time, why do we care now?

Technology Versus the Sun

When our civilization started adopting more and more electronic technologies into our daily lives, we are more susceptible to solar events than ever before. During the 1920s, we began to transmit voice broadcasts for news and entertainment over short wave. It took a while for engineers to correlate the mysterious periods of intense interference to solar activity. In the 1960s, the overloaded power grid in the US was hit by a geomagnetic storm from the sun causing a massive black-out in the northeast. Today the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) not only monitors global weather, it monitors solar weather as well. Once again, what's the big deal?

In the last few years for example, we've had a few instances of such intense X-Ray bombardment from the Sun that the FAA directed all airline flights to remain below 25,000 feet for safety. Before man started routinely flying at higher altitudes, this was never an issue.

When a CME passes the Earth, we experience a geomagnetic storm. The Van Allen belts around the Earth protect us from most of the affects from the storm, though you'll see the interaction of the flare against the Van Allen belts in the form of auroras or Northern Lights. During the Mercury and Gemini spaceflights, their orbits remained below the major bands of the Van Allen belts. The Space Shuttle flies above major portions of the belts and has been brought home early when a CME was detected heading to Earth.

To put this into perspective, Mercury and Gemini orbited a little over 100 miles above the Earth. The Shuttle can orbit as high as 450 miles. The Van Allens provide their protection under 200 miles. GPS orbits at 11,000 miles, and your favorite television broadcast satellites and communications relays are parked at 23,000 miles. So once again, solar weather has not been a big deal until we commercialized space.

Most military satellites were designed to operate after a nuclear event, so a CME passing by is nothing to worry about. As more contemporary commercial satellites moved away from radiation hardening to save money, they became susceptible to these geomagnetic storms. If one of these satellites were left operating during such a storm, it would fry just like leaving your computer modem running during a thunderstorm, and several have been lost to date. During lesser geomagnetic storms, these satellites are safe enough, but we notice these events without knowing what's happening. Our cell phones, pagers, satellite television, radio, etc., suddenly start dropping out or getting noisy. Since we don't know what's happening, we tend to think about changing service providers. Sound familiar?

As we started to understand the cause and effect of sun spots and CME events on our little blue planet, we realized that we faced one problem. While we can see sun spots from Earth, we cannot see CMEs aimed at Earth! These flares are obstructed by the sun itself. Then someone came up with a great idea, put a satellite up in solar orbit ahead of the Earth. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft was born. Since this unique platform is not anywhere near the path between the sun and Earth, its cameras can see CME events aimed our way. Knowing the speed and magnitude of the CME, forecasters can alert power companies, satellite operators, etc., to take the appropriate precautions for the duration of the storm.

Global Warming

Without detracting from the needs preserving our environment, there has been much ado about global warming, hurricanes, polar caps melting, and the like as if this is strictly something we're doing to ourselves. While I don't doubt that we are impacting our environment to some degree, I don't believe that we are the major contributor. In fact, there was an interesting tid-bit in the news that was overlooked by the media - global warming is happening on Mars too! You can search the internet for other interesting articles on this subject. Why do I bring up global warming here? Simple - unless someone has been driving a bunch of SUVs on the Martian surface for a while, the only environmental commonality between our warming trend and Mars' is our sun! It will be interesting to see in the coming years how new environmental models will correlate the cause and effect of our various terrestrial weather patterns with the various solar cycles and CME events.

Watching the Sun

When coupling the resources of the SOHO with a variety of satellites currently orbiting Earth, we're starting to peel the onion about our star and its physics and applying that to our understanding of the solar system, our galaxy and the universe in general. There is so much we still don't know, how does a star work and what sustains the reaction? What is gravity and why aren't we simply flung out into deep space? If the speed of light is an absolute, how do some particles exceed that speed? The list goes on, but more immediate - What is the cause and effect relationship between solar events/weather and our own terrestrial weather patterns. The solar cycle is around 11 years. The hurricane cycle is around 25 years. The ice age cycle is every few million years. Questions, questions.

Since we've only had the technology to really study the sun for a relatively short time, it will take time to start recognizing event patterns. One that we do know is that the surface of the sun completes one rotation every two weeks. That means that a troublesome sun spot or array of sun spots that caused us problems may be back in two weeks if it doesn't dissipate in the meantime.

If you want to have a front seat on a continuous nuclear light show, keep an eye on the sun. Not literally as looking directly into the sun will cause blindness. But thanks to technology, we can now see details of the surface of the sun as well as through well-placed masks, we can see magnificent CMEs departing the sun into directions other than at Earth.

If you're not careful, you might start looking through the eyes of the Hubble Space Telescope or some of the newer instruments going aloft and peer into the past. Our nearest neighbor is Alpha Centauri at a little over four light years away. An astronomer there looking at our sun today would be looking at our sun the way it was about the time the twin-towers of the World Trade Center fell a little over four years ago. Light travels at a known speed, so looking deep into space is looking into the past.

Conclusions

In the grand scheme of things, I am a novice with space-related subjects and I again thank my friend who spent the time years ago explaining orbital mechanics and space-related phenomenon that helped during the flight testing of launch vehicles and their payloads. Ever since that time, I've kept an eye on the sun and thanks to SOHO, that task is even easier over the internet.

So for those of you who share or would like to learn more about the sun and what it means to us, turn your favorite search engine loose and go explore. In the meantime, enjoy the peek into the weather in our corner of space on the main menu.