1 / 33

Studying the Sun

Studying the Sun. An Introduction. Why Study the Sun?. The Climate Connection Space Weather The Sun as a Star The Sun as a Physical Laboratory. The Climate Connection. http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/whysolar.shtml. Ultraviolet (UV) View of the Sun.

maine
Download Presentation

Studying the Sun

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Studying the Sun An Introduction

  2. Why Study the Sun? • The Climate Connection • Space Weather • The Sun as a Star • The Sun as a Physical Laboratory

  3. The Climate Connection http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/whysolar.shtml

  4. Ultraviolet (UV) View of the Sun • UV view of the sun, taken by the SOHO satellite. • UV light causes sunburns • This is a false colour image since humans cannot see UV with their eyes. NASA/SOHO

  5. Hurricane Katrina 28 Aug 2005 The energy that drove Katrina ultimately came from the sun http://www.katrina.noaa.gov/images/katrina-08-28-2005.jpg

  6. Solar Wind and Space Weather This is an example of weather on earth, but weather in space is very different. What is going on here? http://torontoist.com/attachments/toronto_kevinb/2006_11_23FogInToronto.jpg

  7. The solar wind and space weather begins with the sun’s corona expanding out into space • Corona is the outer atmosphere • A special camera blocks the light from the disc of the sun http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/gallery/bestofsoho.html

  8. Solar Wind 20 May 2008 9:03 UT Speed: 377 km/s Density: 6.35 protons/cm3 SOHO satellite Try expressing the density in a sentence.

  9. The solar wind blows the tails of comets away from the sun Comet Hale-Bopp Photo Credit: A. Dimai and D. Ghirardo, (Col Druscie Obs.), AAC

  10. The solar wind is a danger to astronauts and satellites Canadian astronaut Hadfield attached to Canadarm Canadian RADARSAT-1 http://www.space.gc.ca/asc/app/gallery/results2.asp?session=&image_id=6 http://www.space.gc.ca/asc/app/gallery/gallery/hight/STS-100-115.JPG

  11. The earth’s magnetic field without interference of Sun • Is there really a bar magnet in the earth? • Why is the magnet’s south end at the north pole? http://stargazers.gsfc.nasa.gov/resources/magnet_in_space.htm

  12. Notice how the magnetic and geographic poles are different. What defines the geographic north pole?

  13. Solar wind distorting the earth’s magnetic field Not to scale artist’s depiction. http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Geomagnetic

  14. Aurora Borealis seen from space Credit: NASA

  15. Aurora Borealis seen from rural Eastern Ontario, 2004 Credit: Terence Dickinson, Editor SkyNews magazine

  16. Aurora Borealis seen in rural Eastern Ontario, 2004 Credit: Terence Dickinson, Editor SkyNews magazine

  17. Aurora Borealis seen from Wapusk National Park, Manitoba http://i-eclectica.org/category/imagery/

  18. Perseus Cluster of Galaxies Our sun can help us understand the billions of stars in the billions of distant galaxies & those in our own galaxy, the Milky Way Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope / Coelum

  19. Milky Way Galaxy • Our own galaxy has billions of stars, our sun being just one of them! • A photo from a location with low light pollution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Milky_Way_IR_Spitzer.jpg

  20. Inside an Experimental Fusion Reactor(Joint European Torus reactor) …attempting to recreate the sun in a lab to find a new source of energy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:JointEuropeanTorus_internal.jpg

  21. This magnet has unchanging magnetic lines http://www.teachnet-lab.org/ps101/bglasgold/magnetism/magnetism2.jpg

  22. The twisting of the sun’s magnetism Differential rotation: different speeds at different locations above and below equator twist the lines of magnetism

  23. Sun vs Earth Magnetism Sun’s magnetism is complicated Earth’s is relatively simple http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/sun/sun_magnetic_field.html

  24. The Sun’s complicated magnetism • The sun’s magnetism, always changing, is more complicated than the Earth’s magnetism • the sun’s magnetism forms these prominences into loops

  25. Flares are formed by magnetic lines Titanic solar flares dwarf the earth by comparison NASA/SOHO

  26. Galileo 1564-1642 …was credited with discovering sunspots in 1612 using a telescope, but Chinese astronomers may have been the first using the naked-eye http://www.galileo-galilei.org/pictures-galileo-galilei.html

  27. Sunspots NASA/SOHO satellite image of sun with many sunspots

  28. Sunspot Close-up • Granules are hot blobs of gas up to 1000 km wide • Dark spot is a sunspot where magnetism squashes the blobs http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/feature1.shtml

  29. Sunspot Magnetic Field Polarity http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/feature1.shtml

  30. Can you see any patterns in the data? Sunspot Activity http://sidc.oma.be/sunspot-index-graphics/sidc_graphics.php

  31. If the sun was as big as a basketball, earth would be only 2.2 mm in diameter

  32. Pinhole camera geometry light ray

  33. Pinhole camera optics Diameter of object Diameter of image Light rays

More Related