Solar-Terrestrial Sciences

A close-up journey to the Sun: The Parker Solar Probe Mission

Athanasios Papaioannou October 24, 2018

Artist’s concept of the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft approaching the sun. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben

Almost two months ago, in August 12, 2018 Parker Solar Probe (PSP) launched by NASA on a Delta IV Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. This is a long-awaited mission from the Heliospheric community. The first to explore the Sun within distances of ~0.167 AU (or 25 million kilometers) at its perihelia. Its ancestors were the successful Helios -A and -B spacecraft, a pair of probes launched in ...[Read More]

The 2017 solar eclipse and scientific discoveries

Koen Hendrickx August 14, 2017

Composite image showing a detailed view of the solar corona during the 2009 eclipse. Credit: Miloslav Druckmüller

The next solar eclipse is upon us. On August 21 the moon will pass between the Sun and an observer’s point of view in America and block out daylight, creating an eerie gloom in the sky. The transit of the moon between the Earth and Sun occurs about every 18 months, but for your particular city it can take several hundreds of years before a new eclipse occurs. The figure below shows the paths of al ...[Read More]

Capturing a Whole Total Eclipse of the Sun: Megamovie

Hugh S Hudson July 25, 2017

The Eclipse Megamovie Project (from https://eclipsemega.movie/)

by Hugh S Hudson (U. of Glasgow and UC Berkeley) Normally solar eclipses give an observer only a fleeting moment (minutes at most) to enjoy the solar corona. We aim to amplify that considerably in the August 21 eclipse across North America. The plan is simple: Megamovie will capture everybody’s images, especially those from a group of 1,000 photographc volunteers, and compile them into an op ...[Read More]