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Author: Roger Highfield

Source: Daily Telegraph

Publication Date: 25^th April 2007

The first three dimensional images of the sun have been taken by scientists to help to forecast destructive solar storms.

The view from Nasa's twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory spacecraft will greatly aid scientists' ability to improve space weather forecasting.

Violent weather originates in the sun's atmosphere, or corona, and can disrupt satellites, radio communication, and power grids on Earth. Of particular concern is a destructive eruption called a coronal mass ejection.

These are eruptions of electrically charged gas, called plasma, from the sun's atmosphere. A coronal mass ejection cloud can contain billions of tons of plasma and move at a million miles per hour.

Ejections directed toward Earth smash into our planet's magnetic field where they can dump energy and particles. This causes magnetic storms that can overload power line equipment and radiation storms that harm satellites.

Satellite and utility operators can take precautions but they need an accurate forecast of when one will arrive, which is where Stereo comes in.

Estimates of the arrival time will improve "from within a day or so to just a few hours," said Russell Howard of the Naval Research Laboratory, Washington.

The detectors for all the cameras on the spacecraft were built at the Science and Technology Facilities Council's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire.

Added to the database on 25^th April 2007

Useful links

• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/24/wsun24.xml

Keywords: Nasa, sun, solar, storms, forecasting