|
General Information (See also the Sky page)
Special Topics and Solar
Activity
- Current Appearance: Global H-a
Patrol Network page;
Big Bear Solar Observatory page.
- Magnetic Field: Montana State page.
- Sunspots: Photographs by Art
Whipple.
- Sunspot Cycle: NASA Solar Physics page;
NASA's sunspotcycle.com.
- Solar Flares: NASA page.
- Corona: Montana State page
on coronal holes; Features page
from NASA's MSFC.
- Solar Wind: D.P.Stern's page
at NASA; NASA Science Directorate page;
Harvard CfA list
of web resources.
The Sun's Effect on Earth
- SpaceWeather.com:
Science news and information about the Sun-Earth environment.
- Solar Terrestrial Dispatch site
(Space Weather Specialists)
- NASA's Sun-Earth Connection Education Form site.
Earth-Based Solar Studies
- GONG
(Global Oscillation Network Group): A project to conduct a detailed
study of solar internal structure and dynamics using helioseismology.
- The Institute
for Solar Physics: Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Institute; operates the 1-m telescope in the Canary islands that
has produced the best images of sunspots.
- San Fernando Observatory:
A solar research facility of California State University.
Past Solar Space Missions
(in addition to instruments
carried by Skylab and SpaceLab2)
- OSO
(Orbiting Solar Observatories).
- SolarMax
(Solar Maximum Mission): Launched in Feb 1980, operational until
Dec 1989.
- Yohkoh
(Solar-A): Japanese ISAS mission with UK and US collaboration;
Launched in Aug 1991, was active for 10 years until it developed
problems in Dec 2001 (SFN story;
Public Outreach site).
Current Solar Space Missions
- KORONAS-F
(Complex Orbital Near-Earth Observations of the Solar Activity):
Russian spacecraft launched in July 2001 to monitor solar activity.
- RHESSI
(Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager): NASA X- and
gamma-ray mission designed to explore what causes solar flares
to erupt from the Sun and how they release their energy; launched
in Feb 2002.
- SOHO (ESA
and NASA's
Solar and and Heliospheric Observatory): Launched in Dec 1995,
and placed at one of the Earth-Sun Lagrange points; and Coronal
Diagnostic Spectrometer; Its mission is to monitor the solar
surface and environment for solar flares and solar storms, originally
until Mar 2003.
- TRACE
(Transitional Region and Coronal Explorer): Launched in 1998
to study the magnetic field in the solar photosphere and corona.
- Ulysses (ESA,
NASA):
Launched in Oct 1990 to study the Sun's polar regions; 10/01
update; still going string in 2005.
Future Solar Space Missions
- Solar Dynamics Observatory:
NASA's planned successor for SOHO, scheduled to begin a five-year
mission in April, 2008.
- Solar
Orbiter: ESA's planned successor of the SOHO and Ulysses
missions (SFN
article), will look for subsurface flows near the poles; scheduled
for launch around 2012.
- Solar-B:
Japanese ISAS mission, the planned successor to Yohkoh.
- Solar
Probe: NASA mission, for possible 2015 launch.
Solar Wind and Magnetosphere
Missions (also in
the Space Exploration and Earth link pages)
- ACE
(Advanced Composition Explorer): Launched in 1997 to study the
composition of the solar corona, interplanetary medium, and local
interstellar medium.
- IMP 8 (Interplanetary Monitoring Platform): NASA solar
wind monitoring mission launched in 10.1973; Important during
the 1990's but less after the launch of ACE; Active until 10.2001.
- Wind:
NASA spacecraft launched in 1994 to study the solar wind and
magnetosphere.
- Cluster
II: Four satellites (Rumba, Salsa, Samba, Tango)
flying in a tetrahedron formation about 600 km apart; launched
in summer 2000; their goal is to map the Earth's magnetosphere
and the solar wind (ESA).
- Genesis:
NASA spacecraft launched on 8 August 2001; has collected solar
wind samples and returned them to Earth in 2004 (CNN
article;
SFN article,
launch).
Books
- J.W. Freeman, Storms in Space, Cambridge University
Press 2001.
- L. Golub & J. Pasachoff, Nearest Star: The Surprising
Science of Our Sun, Harvard University Press 2001.
- R. Kippenhahn, Discovering the Secrets of the Sun,
John Wiley & Sons 1994.
- K. Lang, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Sun, Cambridge
University Press 2001.
|
