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Solar science
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without permission from the publisher. www.Astronomy.com
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on the
With three instruments operating 24/7, the
Solar Dynamics Observatory is gleaning new
insights into how magnetic fields control
solar activity. by W. Dean Pesnell
Pat Corkery/United Launch Alliance
A
The Solar Dynamics Observatory launches
from Cape Canaveral February 11, 2010, atop
an Atlas V rocket with a Centaur upper stage.
fter a year in orbit, NASAs

Solar Dynamics Observatory
(SDO) has started to fulfill its
promise. The missions task:
to examine the Sun in such
detail that astronomers will be able to
understand how our stars magnetic field
drives solar prominences, flares, coronal
mass ejections (CMEs), and other solar
activity. And, just as important, the observatory will measure the changes in the
Sun that cause space weather, whose
effects range from power outages and
navigation problems on Earth to creating
drag on satellites in orbit.
SDO began its mission February 11,
2010. That day, an Atlas V rocket roared
to life on Space Launch Complex-41 at
Cape Canaveral, Florida, and lofted the
observatory into Earth orbit. Although

the launch went smoothly, as SDO traversed the surrounding atmosphere, it
demonstrated how the observatory could
affect observations of solar phenomena.
A large winter storm over the eastern
United States the previous day brought
cold temperatures to central Florida.
Coupled with a thin layer of cirrus
clouds, the chill produced a sundog a
rainbow-colored patch of light 22 from
the Sun. A sundog arises when sunlight
refracts through six-sided ice crystals all
aligned with their broad sides down.
As SDO climbed through the cirrus
cloud deck, a sound wave emanating
from the rocket caused the sundog to
disappear. Apparently, the wave either
evaporated the ice crystals or destroyed
These colorful Suns show our stars appearance July 28, 2010, at five
wavelengths in the extreme ultraviolet portion of the electromagnetic
spectrum. By observing the Sun at different high-energy wavelengths,
solar scientists will learn how the Sun converts energy in its magnetic
fields into the heat that drives solar flares. NASA/SDO/AIA Science Team
A massive solar prominence (upper left) erupts from the Sun March 30,
2010. Scientists created this false-color, multiwavelength image with data
from the Solar Dynamics Observatory. The orange-red background images
on this page show the Suns chromosphere that same day in the light of
ionized helium (a wavelength of 30.4 nanometers). NASA/SDO/AIA Science Team
www.Astronomy.com
25
1:20 p.m. EDT
1:40 p.m. EDT
2:00 p.m. EDT
On March 30, 2010, a large prominence erupted on the Suns limb and spewed hot gas into space at speeds of approximately 435 miles per second (700
km/sec). This sequence of six images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the eruption lasted only a couple of hours. The observatory captured
these images in the light of singly ionized helium (a wavelength of 30.4 nanometers). NASA/SDO/AIA Science Team
their matching orientations. So, within

minutes of launch, SDO already had
impacted solar observations. But the real
proof of the missions significance would
come only when the observatory began
viewing the Sun in earnest from its perch
far above Earths atmosphere.
SDOs three-pronged attack
The Solar Dynamics Observatory uses

three instruments to study the Suns magnetic field. Scientists designed these tools
to probe the Sun from below its surface
out to the hot corona. Their goal: to find
how the magnetic field changes over time.
Scientists at Stanford University and
the Lockheed Martin Space Astrophysics
Laboratory (LMSAL) developed the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI). It
studies the behavior of the motions of the
Suns surface and also the magnetic fields
there. The Sun is a combination of gas
and its extremely hot, and thus ionized,
counterpart known as plasma; its surface (or photosphere) is the region from
which light escapes into space. Every 45
seconds, HMI makes maps of both velocities (the motions) and line-of-sight
magnetic fields at the solar surface. It also
W. Dean Pesnell is the project scientist for
NASAs Solar Dynamics Observatory.
Wavelength: 33.5nm
offers more information, the line-of-sight

measurements are easier to produce.
SDOs second instrument is the
Extreme ultraviolet Variability Experiment (EVE). Developed at the University
of Colorados Laboratory for Atmospheric
and Space Physics and the University of
Southern California, EVE has three spectrographs that measure the solar spectral
irradiance the amount of energy the
Sun emits at a given wavelength for
wavelengths between 0.1nm and 105nm.
EVE also includes a
small X-ray imager.
Extreme ultraviolet
radiation from the Sun
heats and ionizes the
upper parts of Earths
atmosphere to such a
degree that scientists
call it the heartbeat of
space weather.
The third instrument aboard SDO is
the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly
(AIA), which scientists at LMSAL also
developed. It studies how the solar
corona responds to the magnetic fields
that HMI observes near the Suns surface.
AIAs four telescopes focus light onto
four CCD cameras and take images of the
Suns atmosphere at 10 wavelengths: one
in visible light, two in the ultraviolet part
As soon as the
detectors reached
operating
temperature, the
Sun put on a show.
Wavelength: 30.4nm
Wavelength: 21.1nm
Wavelength: 19.3nm
Wavelength: 17.1nm
Wavelength: 13.1nm
February 1, 2011
Wavelength: 450nm
maps the so-called vector magnetic field,

the component directed across our line of
sight, every 15 minutes.
The instrument makes these maps with
polarizing filters that measure how the
velocity and magnetic field change. To
gauge velocity, they measure the Doppler
shift the change in wavelength as the
distance between the Sun and SDO varies.
As the solar surface enlarges, and thus
moves toward SDO, the wavelength
decreases; as the solar surface shrinks, the
wavelength increases.
Astronomers track
these changes by observing one particular spectral line over time in
this case, iron at 617.3
nanometers and
seeing how its incoming
wavelength changes. The
velocity maps essentially
build ultrasounds of the Sun that reveal
what is going on below its surface. Scientists use the same spectral line to chart the
behavior of magnetic fields at the surface.
Space-weather forecasters use the lineof-sight maps to anticipate solar flares
and CMEs. The vector-field maps, meanwhile, show the strength and direction of
the magnetic field as it emerges through
the surface. Although the vector field
The Suns character changes when viewed at different wavelengths. In visible light (far left), its photosphere typically reveals sunspots. But at shorter
wavelengths in the extreme ultraviolet, the Suns outer atmosphere (its chromosphere and corona) come into view. NASA/SDO/AIA Science Team
26 Astronomy May 2011
2:20 p.m. EDT
2:40 p.m. EDT
of the spectrum, and seven in the extreme

ultraviolet part that corresponds to the
ionization states of iron and helium. Data
from the iron spectral lines allow SDO
scientists to map the coronas temperature
from 0.6 to 20 million kelvins; the helium
observations probe temperatures from
30,000 to 100,000 K.
Because EVE and AIA fly together,
solar astronomers can associate most
changes in the Suns irradiance with specific events, such as flares, simply by aligning changes in EVEs measurements with
changes in the AIA images. This helps
EVE scientists explain where their changes
came from and helps calibrate AIA by
determining the energy of each event.
3:00 p.m. EDT
HMI even saw a sunspot before the

instruments door fully opened. Almost
immediately after the EVE doors opened
at 2:43 p.m. EDT March 26, active region
11057 provided fireworks. The hot spot
fired off four relatively small flares starting at 5:08 p.m. EDT.
But the Sun saved its best for last.
Although AIA scientists opened their
doors March 27, they kept their CCDs
hot to drive off contaminants. On March
30, just after the CCDs reached their
operating temperatures of 94 Fahren-
heit (70 Celsius), an enormous prominence erupted off the Suns limb. (See the
sequence of images above and the large
photo on page 25.)
The images show that the ring-shaped
prominence sent a pulse of plasma rushing away from the Sun at a speed of about
435 miles per second (700 km/s). Before
the eruption, this prominence was a long
tube of magnetically contained material
just above the visible surface. Then, by
some still poorly understood mechanisms, it destabilized and created a small
A grand first show
After its launch, SDO took more than a

month to reach its operating position. On
March 16, 2010, the observatory reached
its final geosynchronous orbit, in which it
hovers above the longitude of its White
Sands, New Mexico, receiving station.
From this location, it can both observe
the Sun and communicate with the
ground 24 hours a day.
Soon afterward, NASA engineers
started to turn on the electronics for each
SDO instrument before cooling down the
CCDs and opening the instrument doors.
HMI went first and then EVE, while AIA
kept its heaters on until its doors opened.
As soon as the detectors reached operating temperature, the Sun put on a show.
Wavelength: 33.5nm
Wavelength: 30.4nm
Wavelength: 21.1nm
Wavelength: 19.3nm
Wavelength: 17.1nm
Wavelength: 13.1nm
February 14, 2011
Wavelength: 450nm
A double rainbow arcs above one of the 18-meter radio dishes at NASAs White Sands Complex in
New Mexico. Because the Solar Dynamics Observatory lies in geosynchronous orbit, the antennas
here can receive all of the observatorys data. NASA/Tim Gregor
A Valentines Day solar flare erupted from a sunspot group located just to the lower right of the Suns center. The group shows up nicely in visible light (far
left). At shorter wavelengths, the flares brightness dominates. This February 14 event was the Suns largest flare in more than 4 years. NASA/SDO/AIA Science Team
www.Astronomy.com
27
4:45 a.m. EDT
5:15 a.m. EDT
5:45 a.m. EDT
Active region 11092 (the bright maelstrom halfway to the limb in the 10 oclock direction) flared several times August 1, 2010, but that was just the start.
Shock waves raced across the solar surface, disrupting the dark filaments visible above the Suns center. At about 4:40 a.m. EDT, one of these filaments
launched a coronal mass ejection toward Earth. These images show gas glowing at 1.5 million kelvins (a wavelength of 19.3nm). NASA/SDO/AIA Science Team
CME. It is vitally important to understand these mechanisms because they

produce all CMEs, which can launch up
to 10 billion tons of plasma into the solar
system and cause serious consequences
for any object, natural or man-made, that
happens to be in the way.
Since the first observations made
through the AIA 30.4nm channel, SDO
scientists have observed new dynamics in
how coronal filaments evolve. SDO teams
have studied why and how filaments form,
erupt off the surface, twist, and either eject
into the solar wind or return
to the lower solar atmosphere
as coronal rain. Much of
what solar scientists see, they
dont yet understand. For
example, why do some filaments escape and others have
their plasma drain back onto
the Sun? Are the filaments
twisted when they become
unstable, and do they twist more as they
erupt? Does the filament heat or cool as it
erupts? And how does the coronal rain
interact with the dense atmosphere once it
falls back to the surface?
magnetic energy into heat. Solar physicists classify flares as B, C, M, or X (from

low- to high-energy X-rays); they also use
flares appearances in Hydrogen-alpha
images to categorize them. SDO provides
the additional ability to classify flares by
their total energy (by combining AIA and
EVE measurements) and by their development at many temperatures.
The new observatory has started to
give researchers a unique look at flare
evolution. Much of this is because SDO
takes fresh images of the Sun almost continuously (AIA, for
example, snaps eight
full-disk images every
12 seconds and operates nearly 24/7). But
SDO also covers a
broad range of temperatures, and scientists can coordinate the
measurements made
through its three instruments. The Sun
has produced flares of all classes for SDO,
including the strongest X-class flare in
more than 4 years on February 14, 2011.
EVE data reveal that most of the
energy radiated by a flaring region does
not consist of X-rays with wavelengths
less than 7nm, but at longer extreme
ultraviolet (EUV) wavelengths around
27nm. This has consequences far beyond
our understanding of solar flares. Earths
atmosphere absorbs EUV radiation at
higher altitudes than it does X-rays, and
SDO takes fresh

images of the
Sun almost
continuously.
The what and how of flares
People have watched solar flares for more

than 150 years. (English astronomer Richard Carrington spotted the first September 1, 1859.) During that time, researchers
have learned that flares release enormous
amounts of energy by converting the Suns
28 Astronomy May 2011
EUV emissions last longer as well. Both of

these observations indicate that scientists
need solar spectral measurements in
many wavelengths to predict the effects of
space weather in our planets atmosphere.
The magnetic fields behavior
Solar physicists have not yet figured out

cause and effect of flares, CMEs, and other
magnetic phenomena. Its a little like an
incident with my young nephew. After
dinner one evening, he ran around the
family room and hit the wall at full speed
just as the furnace coincidentally turned
on and warm air rushed into the room. He
looked around and said, It never did that
before. I just had to hit the wall harder.
Scientists face a similar situation when
they look at the Sun. We already know its
magnetic field connects places on the Sun
that can be far apart. Flares, prominences,
and CMEs happen somewhere on our star
almost every day. How can we know
whether any two events are related, or
whether the butterfly effect is at work? If
small changes in one place on the Sun can
cause large changes in another place, then
understanding and predicting its magnetic
field becomes far more complicated.
SDO scientists can look at this problem
using high-resolution observations across
many wavelengths beamed to Earth at a
rate of nearly one new image every second. This allows them to see changes
propagate across the Suns disk. Theyve
already seen several examples, but the best
6:15 a.m. EDT
was the August 1, 2010, flare and double

CME. (See the images above, which show
the Sun in AIAs 19.3nm channel.)
Active region 11092 flared several
times early that morning. Although this
was only a C-class flare, it affected two
filaments whose foot points (where the
ends enter the Suns surface) were 185,000
miles (300,000 kilometers) and 280,000
miles (450,000 km) away, respectively.
Soon after the flare, a dimming in the
corona spread across the Sun. When this
dimming reached the longer filament, it
began to lift off the Sun. At about 5:40 a.m.
EDT, the filament erupted and launched a
CME toward Earth. Afterward, a beautiful
arcade of post-eruption loops formed in
AIA images and a prairie fire of emission
spread out below where the filament had
been. Later that day, the second filament
also erupted. Although all three events
occurred on the same day and in relatively
Whats ahead for

the Sun?
Sunspot number
150
100
50
Solar Cycle
23
0
2000
2005
Solar Cycle
24
2010
Year
2015
2020
No one knows how big Solar Cycle 24 will be.

Black dots show cycle 23 observations and red
dots cycle 24. The author predicts the current
cycle will peak with an average sunspot number
of 80. He predicts the peak will occur in late 2013
or early 2014. Astronomy: Roen Kelly, after W. Dean Pesnell
The August 1, 2010, flare (white area at upper left) launched a shock wave whose edge appears at
upper right. This view combines data from three extreme ultraviolet wavelengths. NASA/SDO/AIA Science Team
close proximity, SDO scientists still havent

determined cause and effect. Some think
the spreading of coronal dimming represents a wave or pulse that links remote
areas of the Sun, but others arent so sure.
Looking in the crystal ball
Given our current knowledge, predicting

future solar activity is a huge challenge.
Depending on the prediction you read,
the current solar cycle (number 24) could
be extremely large or nearly absent.
(Solar cycles run on a roughly 11-year
period from minimum to maximum and
back; the current cycle began in 2009 and
should end around 2020.)
Looking at the Suns present state, it
appears that Solar Cycle 24 will prove
below average in terms of the number of
sunspots, and also longer than average.
This would follow a pattern in sunspot
numbers where the Suns activity level
pauses every 100 years or so. But we
dont have a clue what Solar Cycle 25
will look like. By combining the rapid
increase in data from missions such as

SDO with ever-faster computer speeds to
run solar models, solar scientists should
take big steps forward before Solar Cycle
25 starts around 2020.
The vector magnetograms produced
by HMI should help with their predictions. For the first time, solar scientists
will have measurements of the strength
and direction of the Suns magnetic field
over its visible disk. These data are fast
enough for scientists to see changes in
the field that coincide with or precede
flares and CMEs.
From launch to the present, SDO has
yielded information about the Sun and the
world around us. Will pulses spreading
from central sites serve as the link between
the events witnessed at SDOs launch and
the solar science it conducts? Time will
tell. After all, SDOs 5-year mission to
study Solar Cycle 24 has just begun.
Watch SDO videos of the Sun at
www.Astronomy.com/toc.
www.Astronomy.com
29
Stellar astrophysics
A billion tons of gas

erupts from the Sun
during a coronal mass
ejection. This blast
occurred January 8,
2002, near the peak
of solar cycle 23.
SOHO (NASA and ESA)
Is the
an oddball star?
Accepted wisdom holds that the Sun is an ordinary,
run-of-the-mill star. But astronomers are having a hard
time finding true solar twins. by Bruce Dorminey
m OK. Youre OK. But the Sun? It

could be having a midlife crisis.
Like aging parents anxiously taking stock of their adult offspring,
solar physicists must continually
tweak their theoretical models
to explain our middle-aged stars sometimes confounding behavior. Most solar
researchers confidently declare our Sun
to be perfectly normal; average even. But
then in the next breath, they protectively
argue that the Sun is unique or peculiar
in its own right.
Among the questions these researchers continually ask are: How normal is
the Sun for a star of spectral type G2? Is
its behavior fine-tuned for life, or is our
evolution here something of a fluke? And
if the Sun is average, where are all its analogs among the hundreds of billions of
stars in our galaxy?
For decades, astronomers have hunted
for a solar twin that would best match the
chemical and astrophysical characteristics of our own aging star. By definition,
a solar analog is a spectral type G star of
Frequent contributor Bruce Dorminey is

a science journalist and author of Distant
Wanderers: The Search for Planets Beyond
the Solar System (Springer, 2001).
any age. By contrast, a solar twin must

be nearly the same age. It also must have
a mass, chemical composition, and temperature nearly identical to the Suns.
Spots before our eyes
In time, our true stellar soul mates will

provide a basis of comparison to help
scientists fine-tune their current solar
models. Until then, a large part of our
solar-learning curve lies in the varying
magnetic forces that surround the Suns
11-year sunspot cycles.
During the past 100 years alone,
observers have reported between 40,000
and 50,000 sunspots. These numbers wax
and wane with a fairly steady 11-year
period. Yet the Suns latest sunspot cycle,
solar cycle 24, began almost a year late.
In June and July of 2009, some anemic
sunspot activity finally kicked in after a
2008 in which more than 260 days had
no visible sunspots.
Most of 2008 and 2009 were as dead
as a doornail, says astronomer Gary
Chapman, director of Californias San
Fernando Observatory, who has been
running solar observations since 1986. A
typical sunspot is 2 or 3 times the size of
Earth. Were seeing one or two tiny ones
a month, smaller than Earth. During a
normal solar maximum, you would have

dozens of sunspots on any given day.
Records of sunspots date to the 4th
century b.c. But in 1610, Galileo observed
them in detail as they moved across the
solar sphere. That happened some 30
years before the sunspots all but disappeared during the Maunder minimum,
a 70-year period of diminished solar
activity that lasted from 1645 to 1715.
Then, 2 centuries later, German amateur astronomer Heinrich Schwabe made
an extraordinary discovery during a
lengthy search for a planet inside Mer
curys orbit. Schwabe noticed that his
observations of sunspots seemed to show
a peak about once a decade. For obscure
historical reasons, astronomers slapped
the label of solar cycle 1 on an uneventful cycle that peaked in 1760.
Since then, observers have watched
23 cycles come and go. In March 2007,
I predicted cycle 24 would be at least a
year late, says UCLA solar physicist
Roger Ulrich, who also began observing
the Sun in 1986. Weve beat the 1905
extended solar minimum. The end of the
Maunder minimum was the last time we
had a cycle this long. But I think were
[now] coming into a period of rising
solar activity.
www.Astronomy.com
25
Christoph Scheiner observed the Sun starting

in 1611, about the same time as Galileo. The two
scientists described dark spots moving across our
stars surface. Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering, and Technology
flow migration of the most recent cycle

had slowed. This jet stream is moving
down toward the equator at a slower rate
than the previous solar cycle, says Hill,
and the extra length of time its taking
is equivalent to the extended solar minimum. We conclude that theyre related.
A new Maunder minimum?
Multiple sunspot groups dot the Suns surface October 28, 2003, when activity from solar
cycle 23 remained quite high. SOHO (NASA and ESA)
A single small sunspot mars an otherwise
bland surface on the Sun February 2, 2010.
The current solar cycle (number 24) got off to
a later-than-normal start and has yet to ramp
up significantly. SOHO (NASA and ESA)
This anomalously long solar minimum raises the question of whether

solar scientists actually understand the
Suns inner workings. If you dont worry
about the magnetic fields, we do, says
Ulrich. The magnetics is where the big
puzzle is these days.
Solar scientists understand that solar
magnetic fields start in the Suns interior.
Dynamic flows of plasma generate electrical currents that give rise to the Suns
active dynamo. This internal process
gives birth to magnetic fields.
The Sun concentrates these fields,
twisting and turning them in the process.
Such distorted fields inhibit the ability of
rising and falling gas cells to transport
energy, a process scientists call convection. Where the magnetic fields break
through the solar surface, or photosphere, temperatures can be as much as
26 Astronomy June 2010
2700 Fahrenheit (1500 Celsius) cooler

than their surroundings. Such a region
radiates less energy and looks darker
and we see a sunspot.
According to the dynamo theory,
says Ulrich, the polar field generates the
toroidal [circular] field, and the toroidal
field generates the sunspots. The toroidal
field is like a big rubber band wrapped up
inside the Sun. It has kinks that pop up as
sunspot pairs.
But thats not all thats happening just
beneath the Suns surface. East-west jet
streams, known as torsional oscillations,
slowly migrate from the Suns middle latitudes to the equator and its poles.
Normally, their migrations take place
over a 17-year period. But in 2009, solar
physicists Rachel Howe and Frank Hill at
the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in
Tucson, Arizona, found that the zonal
Whether this jet stream is causing the

extended solar minimum remains open
to debate. Even so, stellar astronomer
Mark Giampapa, deputy director of NSO,
is one of the first solar researchers who
thinks we may be entering a long-period,
Maunder-type minimum, or a so-called
grand solar minimum.
My gut feeling is that were heading
into the next Maunder minimum, says
Giampapa. Our observational sunspot
data archive since the 1980s points to a
long-term trend of decreasing mean
[average] magnetic field strengths in sunspots. Could these changes affect Earth
in some way? After all, Giampapa notes
that mean global temperatures have been
declining from their maximum in 1998.
Hill doesnt think were going into a
Maunder minimum, although he suggests
such long-term minima could originate
from random dynamo action at the base
of the Suns convection zone.
Even if we face an extended minimum, Hill doesnt think it would have a
major effect on Earth. I would guess a
grand minimum would change global
temperatures by a degree at the most, he
says. But some solar researchers believe
Earths own climate mechanisms could

amplify any temperature changes in ways
that solar physicists and climatologists
still dont completely understand.
Steve Tobias, an applied mathematician
at the University of Leeds in the United
Kingdom, says differential rotation
the fact that the solar atmosphere rotates
at different speeds at different latitudes
and depths generates the toroidal field
that leads to the formation of sunspots.
Changes in differential rotation could,
in turn, weaken the solar dynamo. This
could instigate an interval where the formation of active regions simply switches
off, says Tobias. This also might modify
the solar dynamo and cause the Sun to go
through a Maunder-type minimum.
Looking to the stars
No matter what causes such events,

Giampapa says he sees tentative evidence
for Maunder-type cycles in some of the
solar analogs hes observed. Giampapa
and his Italian colleagues studied the
open star cluster M67, located some
2,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cancer. If scientists confirm
this trend, he says, it would indicate that
A sunspot group may comprise dozens of individual spots. Each spot typically contains a dark
central region called the umbra, which is up to 2700 F (1500 C) cooler than the surrounding
photosphere, and a lighter outer region called the penumbra. Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Europe suffers a deep freeze

Students of art history will readily identify a string of late-Renaissance
Netherlandish paintings that depict what look like unusually harsh
winters. From 1500 to 1850, a Little Ice Age engulfed much of the
world, but its effects proved particularly strong in Northern Europe.
Cool summers and colder-than-average winters were the norm. The
unusually cold winters allowed frost fairs to be held on Londons
frozen River Thames as late as 1814.
In addition to the 70-year Maunder minimum from 1645 to 1715,
two other solar minima affected Northern Europe during this epoch:
the Sprer minimum from approximately 1415 to 1510 and the Dalton minimum from about 1795 to 1820.
Some researchers think volcanic ash might have triggered the
Little Ice Age, and then the Maunder minimum amplified the effect.
Thats a view that Gary Chapman, a solar physicist and director of
Californias San Fernando Observatory, sees as plausible. The Little Ice
Age actually began before the Maunder minimum and continued into
the Maunder minimum, says Chapman. Maybe the Little Ice Age was
bigger than it should have been if the Sun [hadnt been] involved.
Contrary to some reports, this period of solar inactivity was welldocumented at the time. Researchers at the Paris Observatory alone
made some 8,000 observations between 1660 and 1719. And, in
1887, after constructing a table of sunspots recorded between
1672 and 1699, German astronomer Gustav Sprer reported that
he found fewer than 50 spots.
Its hard not to speculate how a grand minimum might affect our
present climate. But if solar activity cuts out like it did during the
The Little Ice Age brought unusually cold weather to much of northern Europe from 1500 to 1850. In this 1565 painting by Pieter Bruegel,
a crowd skates on a frozen river. The lack of sunspots during the
Maunder minimum may have exacerbated this 350-year cold spell.
Maunder minimum, says Chapman, we may start seeing some cooling effect. However, scientists still debate the specific effects of such
grand minima. Part of this debate hinges on lingering questions
about how Earths atmosphere amplifies such solar variabilities.
As a result, the National Solar Observatorys Frank Hill says,
theres a disconnect between solar physicists and climatologists.
Both solar physicists and climatologists need to come together
about the impact of solar activity on climate, says Hill. B. D.
www.Astronomy.com
27
quiescent than most stars, says Giampapa. But cycles in Sun-like stars in M67
could be quite similar to our Sun.
And a little quiescence might not be so
bad. Were near the end of our ropes here
now, says astronomer Edward Guinan of
Villanova University in Pennsylvania.
Thats because even though the Sun is
only about halfway through its 10-billionyear hydrogen-burning lifetime, its
increasing luminosity will make Earth
uninhabitable much sooner perhaps
within the next 500 million years.
A better place for life?
Hot gas traces the Suns magnetic field lines as they arc above the solar surface. Essentially all solar
activity arises from magnetic forces acting beneath, at, and above the surface. TRACE/NASA/GSFC
such grand minima occur in Sun-like

stars only 10 to 15 percent of the time.
There is no doubt that the Sun experienced many more Maunder-type minima during the past 10,000 years, says
Jrg Beer, a physicist at Switzerlands
Eawag Research Institute. His team used
the radioactive elements Beryllium-10
and Carbon-14 found in polar ice cores
and tree rings to reconstruct solar history
over the past 10,000 years. The minima
themselves do not show a clear periodicity. However, they seem to be clustered
with a [spacing] of about 200 years.
But the Suns magnetics, which drive
both short-term solar magnetic cycles
and perhaps even grand minima, present
more of a puzzle. Thats why observers
and theorists alike need to compare the
Sun with close solar analogs. So far, scientists have turned up only a couple
dozen. The trick is not in finding stars
that make a nice chemical match. Such
Sunspot number
200
stars are fairly common. But researchers

also want to find stars with similar ages,
masses, and magnetic cycles as the Sun.
One of Earths nearest neighbors,
Alpha Centauri A, is a true solar analog.
It belongs to a triple star system that lies
only 4.36 light-years away. With an estimated age of 6 billion years, however, its
about 1.5 billion years older than the Sun.
But Alpha Centauri A is just one star.
Giampapas team is studying 15 solar analogs in M67 with the European Southern
Observatorys Very Large Telescope in
Chile. M67 offers a unique laboratory to
search for solar analogs because its stars
chemical compositions and ages (roughly
3.5 to 4.8 billion years old) are nearly the
same as the Suns. Giampapa says that
after 6 years of observations, none of the
stars his team has observed appears to
have cycles that last less than 6 years.
Im seeing some brightness variability
data that suggests the Sun might be more
Because of its relatively short life, the Sun

may not be the best candidate star for supporting planets with life. Guinan says that
spectral type K stars may be better hosts.
Such stars possess about 80 percent of the
Suns mass and burn cooler, so they fuse
hydrogen stably for much longer. K stars
have fixed habitable zones, regions where
liquid water could exist on a planets surface. Theoretically, intelligent life there
could survive for 40 to 50 billion years.
Even cooler M stars make up some
75 percent of the galaxys inhabitants.
Although M stars live a long time, they
glow dimly. Their habitable zones lie so
close in that any planet orbiting within
one would be tidally locked, with one
side continuously facing the star and the
other in constant darkness.
K and M stars have a further liability.
Both types have more efficient dynamos
than the Sun, so they produce more magnetic energy. Strong magnetic fields pose
more danger than no magnetic fields, says
Ulrich. He notes that the largest recorded
eruption of charged particles from the
Sun, a so-called coronal mass ejection,
came during the 1859 solar superstorm.
The aurorae were so bright that people
camping in Colorado awoke and decided
A history of sunspots
Dalton
minimum
100
Maunder minimum
1600
1650
1700
1750
1800
Year
1850
1900
1950
2000
Typical solar cycles last about 11 years, but the strength of each cycle varies considerably. This illustration plots the yearly average sunspot numbers
since 1610, when detailed observations began. During the Maunder minimum from 1645 to 1715, virtually no spots appeared. Astronomy: Roen Kelly
28 Astronomy June 2010
Helioseismology reveals the Suns structure and dynamics by measuring

sound waves generated in the interior. This computer representation
shows rising gas in blue and sinking gas in red. NSO/AURA/NSF
it was dawn, says Ulrich. Sparks flew

out of all the telegraph instruments.
Such extraordinary events demonstrate how volatile our Sun can be. It also
gives pause to wonder: Does the Suns
evolution and its often tumultuous solar
cycles qualify it as normal?
To answer this question, astronomers
need to probe the interiors of the Sun
and other stars. The science of helioseismology studies the Suns interior structure
and dynamics by measuring sound waves
emanating from our star. The best observations so far have come from the Global
Oscillation Network Group (GONG).
An asteroseismological version of
GONG the Stellar Oscillations Network Group (SONG) plans to study
solar-like oscillations in nearby bright
stars. This Danish-led international effort
Open star cluster M67 holds at least 15 close

solar analogs stars with similar masses, ages,
and compositions as the Sun. Observations so far
show that none of these analogs has a stellar
cycle shorter than 6 years. Anthony Ayiomamitis
This obscure star in Draco, HIP 56948, is the closest thing to a solar twin
astronomers have discovered. The 9th-magnitude star lies just north of the
Big Dippers bowl. Bill and Sally Fetcher
will link eight new telescopes spread over

five continents, including the U.S. mainland and Hawaii.
The network will offer full-sky 24hour observational coverage. SONG
researchers hope the first prototype,
located in the Canary Islands, will see
first light by early 2011. Giampapa says
SONG-like global networks are what
scientists need to confirm whether
these solar analogs are indeed operating
on solar-type cycles and experience
Maunder-type grand minima.
Find a solar twin
Meanwhile, astronomer Jorge Melndez

at Portugals University of Porto leads an
international collaboration looking for
solar twins. My group has already studied about 75 percent of stars similar to the
Sun in the whole Hipparcos million-star
catalog, says Melndez. Surprisingly, we
see that the Sun is actually chemically
different from most solar twins.
Thats in part because our star is lacking in refractory elements those that
vaporize at high temperatures says
Melndez. These missing elements probably formed dust, which then accreted
into planetesimals and ultimately into
the terrestrial planets: Mercury, Venus,
Earth, and Mars. Melndez notes that
an estimated 15 percent of stars seem to
have a chemical composition similar to
the Suns, raising the possibility that such
stars also may possess terrestrial planets.
Thus far, the closest to a solar twin

Melndezs team has found is the obscure
star HIP 56948. This 9th-magnitude
object lies some 217 light-years from
Earth in the constellation Draco.
But NASAs Kepler mission should
create an asteroseismological shift in the
search for solar twins. During a 4-year
period, Kepler will observe 100,000 stars
in a single 100-square-degree field. The
spacecrafts instruments are sensitive
enough to measure the passage of individual starspots across the disks of its
stellar targets.
Travis Metcalfe, an astronomer at the
High Altitude Observatory in Boulder,
Colorado, predicts that over Keplers lifetime, the spacecraft will find at least 100
solar analogs. However, he emphasizes
that the key to understanding the Sun in
detail is the broader study of other stars.
Theres always the danger that if we
study this one object in great detail, were
just going to fine-tune our model to fit
that one Sun, says Metcalfe. But that
same model has to work for other stars.
At the end of the Kepler mission, if
not before, researchers should be able to
partially settle our age-old quandary over
what constitutes solar normality. And in
the process, astronomers might just find
a solar twin orbited by its own family of
habitable terrestrial siblings.
To learn more about the Suns biggest
blasts, visit www.Astronomy.com/toc.
www.Astronomy.com
29
A stars final voyage
How
the Sun
will die
When Sun-like stars
exhaust their fuel,
they cast off shells of
gas, creating colorful
fireworks. by Bruce Balick
ur Sun has lived half its life. Five billion years

from now, its inner workings will trigger a transformation. For a brief span, distant observers
will not see a star, but a colorful, expanding
cloud of gas called a planetary nebula.
Astronomers pay close attention to planetary nebulae,
and these objects have gotten more popular since the
mid-1990s, when the Hubble Space Telescope began
delivering spectacular photographs of them. In fact, a new
planetary nebula has probably flared to life somewhere in
the Milky Way since Hubble went into service. The object
may be too far, too small, or too faint to detect, but its out
there waiting to return our gaze.
Despite the efforts of astronomers using Hubble and
many other instruments that have probed planetary nebulae in every wavelength, there remain important aspects
of these enigmatic objects we dont understand.
www.Astronomy.com
38 Astronomy December
without 08
permission from the publisher.
This infrared view of the Helix Nebula from

NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope shows features
called cometary knots with blue-green heads. The
knots glow brightly because of shock fronts or
ultraviolet radiation at wavelengths between
3.2 and 4.5 microns, to which astronomers
assigned the colors blue and green, respectively.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/J. Hora (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA)
The Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) in Aquarius is

one of the best known planetary nebulae.
Its also one of the closest, lying only 650
light-years from Earth. NASA/NOAO/ESA/The Hubble
Nebula Team/M. Meixner (STScI)/T. A. Rector (NRAO)
www.Astronomy.com
39
The Ant Nebula (Menzel 3) resembles a garden-variety ant. This Hubble image reveals the ants body as a pair of fiery lobes protruding from a dying
Sun-like star. The Ant Nebula lies in the southern constellation Norma approximately 3,000 light-years away. NASA/ESA/The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
The majority rules
The story of a planetary nebula starts at

the end of a stars red giant phase. Thats
when the stars core finally dies. It
becomes a dense, Earth-sized lump of
carbon containing about 50 percent of
the Suns original mass. The core has no
way to replenish its heat, so it cools like
an ember in a fireplace.
Some life remains in the layers outside
the core, however. Gravity has compressed shells of fresh hydrogen and
helium to their thermonuclear fusion
points. They burn furiously, but only
briefly. For example, the Sun will be
about 30 times brighter than now when it
enters the red giant stage. At the most
luminous stage of its evolution, however,
it will be 150 times larger and 2,100 times
more luminous than it is now.
Within stars that will become planetary nebulae, carbon is the ultimate
fusion byproduct. Such a stars atmospheric carbon settles down and adds its
mass to the inert carbon core. The remaining fuel is too far from the core, so
not enough mass remains above it to
compress it to its fusion point. Instead,
the last spasmodic fits of helium burning a colloquial term substituted for
fusion by astronomers fling these
outer layers into space, resulting in a
planetary nebula a thousand years later.
Each of the spasmodic sneezes produces a new bubble of gas flowing outBruce Balick is Chairman of the Department
of Astronomy at the University of Washington,
Seattle. He serves on the design team for WFPC 3.
40 Astronomy December 08
This cosmic jellyfish actually is planetary

nebula OH231.8+4.2, sometimes called the
Rotten Egg Nebula. Shown in blue is light
from hydrogen and ionized nitrogen arising
from supersonic shocks where the gas
stream collides with surrounding material.
This image showed, for the first time, these
complex gas structures predicted by theory.
ESA/Valentin Bujarrabal (Observatorio Astronomico Nacional, Spain)
ward at about 36,000 mph (58,000 km/h).

Astronomers can see these bubbles as
concentric rings of luminous gas in many
Hubble images of planetary nebulae.
The stars final helium flash is a doozy.
Instead of another bubble, we get a dense
and highly organized spray of gas and
fresh dust particles. This event creates the
planetary nebulas shape that is, its
complex inner structure and organization. The superwind is too organized
and symmetric to be the chaotic remnant
of an explosion. Rather, theres method
or perhaps a few methods in the
mad out-rush of material.
In many planetary nebulae, the dark
dust lane and the bright lobes seen in
images along their major axes form in the

final helium flash. This material cools as
it expands. Based on observations,
astronomers surmise dust particles
quickly condense at the base of the outflow just before the gas disperses.
New dust makes up about 1 percent of
the mass ejected into the interstellar
medium. This enriches the surrounding
area with carbon- and silicate-rich particles along with a variety of carbonbased molecules. The dust particles are
small (0.001 millimeter or so) and reflect
light from the nearby dying star.
The newly born preplanetary nebulae
(sometimes called protoplanetary nebulae) are small and far away on average.
Because they appear tiny, Hubble is the
observing tool of choice.
Only the most elite of all stars those
whose mass puts them in the upper 1
percent become supernovae. The rest
settle for 15 minutes of fame before
they fade away, and we see the results as
planetary nebulae. That time span
when the star ejects and ionizes its outer
layers in a final fiery, smoky breath is
what attracts astronomers attention.
Planetary nebulae ultimately expand
and disperse into the ocean of galactic
gas known as the interstellar medium. All
that remains are ever-cooling white
dwarfs natures burnt cherry pits
too faint to see after a billion years and
too numerous to name.
Revealing a planetary
It takes about a thousand years for a new

planetary nebula to become visible. Its
gas has to expand to a size we can detect,

and the star at its center must shed its
cool outer layers and reach a temperature
of about 30,000 kelvins (K).
Before this happens, the nascent planetary nebula shines only because its
newly formed dust particles happen to
reflect starlight in our direction. Indeed,
the dust may hide the visible light
entirely until the nebula expands for a
while and light finds pathways out of the
opaque cocoon.
At 30,000 K, ultraviolet photons start
to strip electrons from neutral atoms.
This ionizes the gas, rendering the planetary nebula visible. The objects spectrum shows lines of hydrogen, helium,
and other elements. Using filters that isolate these emissions, Hubble and other
telescopes can take the spectacular color
images weve grown accustomed to.
No chain is stronger than its weakest
link, and no theory of stellar evolution
can be complete without understanding
the origin of the shapes of planetary nebulae. Its a thrill for an observer like me to
get imaging time on Hubble. However,
theres a sobering and, for the really
spectacular nebulae, gut-wrenching
realization that we have not yet explained
the structure of these amazing objects.
From a scientific viewpoint, images of
preplanetary nebulae pose a problem. All
known stellar wind acceleration mechanisms convert light energy from the star
into outward motions of dust particles.
Just like the Sun shining on a comets tail,
light pushes on the dust particles and
forces them to flow outward. If the star is
round, then the outflows also should look
round. Almost none of the preplanetary
nebulae behave this way, however.
The Retina Nebula (IC 4406) exhibits a high degree of symmetry; the left and right halves are nearly
mirror images of each other. Gas and dust form a vast doughnut of material streaming outward from
the dying star. One perplexing feature of IC 4406 is the irregular lattice of dark lanes that crisscross
the nebulas center. We see them in silhouette because their density is 1,000 times greater than the
rest of the nebula. NASA/The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)/C. R. ODell (Vanderbilt Univ.)
The stellar superwind may be the last

big event in a stars life, but theres more
to come. Ultraviolet observations of the
emerging star clearly show the presence
of a fast wind whose speed is truly
impressive up to 350,000 mph
(560,000 km/h) but whose mass density is smaller than that of the superwind.
The fast wind quickly smashes into
A planetary nebula gets its certificate

when the central star becomes hot enough
to ionize the preplanetary nebula.
Spanish radio astronomers uncovered
a second problem in 2001. They measured the Doppler shifts from carbon
monoxide (CO) emissions (CO is always
a bountiful molecule in cool, dusty gas)
and found the momentum of the outflowing gas is more than 10,000 times
larger than light-pressure based acceleration mechanisms had predicted.
the slower wind ejected earlier, pushes

the gas out of its way, and sears whatever
gas it contacts. This effect creates the
appearance of an empty cavity between
the central star and the rest of the nebula.
The cavity is no more empty than an
inflated tire; it just looks that way.
Inside this illusionary cavity, we detect
X rays from gas heated to a million
degrees or more by the fast wind. At its

perimeter, we find gas that has been
scooped up into a thin rim. Beyond the
rim lies a slow wind that has yet to sense
the bubbles presence. Ultimately, the
bubble pops when it reaches the outer
edge of the slow wind, emptying its contents into the interstellar medium. As it
does, it may scoop up much older gas the
star had deposited when it was still a red
giant. This can create large halos or pairs
of bubble-like lobes.
A planetary nebula gets its certificate
when the central star becomes hot
enough to ionize the preplanetary nebula. The fast wind peels away the stars
cool outer layers and exposes hotter
inner regions. So the stars surface
becomes increasingly blue. This takes a
few hundred to a few thousand years,
after which the stars surface temperature
reaches up to 100,000 K. For comparison,
the Suns surface is currently 5,800 K.
The small, hot surface of the dying
star emits ultraviolet light before it starts
www.Astronomy.com
41
How astronomers classify planetary nebulae

CLASS
Round
Elliptical
Butterfly
Early
NGC 6891
M192
Abell 39
NGC 3918
NGC 6501
NGC 2438
NGC 6886
TYPE
IC 3568
Middle
Late
NGC 6302
Edge of outer halo
Astronomers have identified three types of planetary nebulae, along with

three classes. Combinations allow for nine distinct shapes among these
objects. The key image to the right shows the nebulaes main parts. All planetary
nebula images courtesy of NASA/ESA/STScI; artwork: Astronomy: Roen Kelly after Bruce Balick
Outer halo
Inner halo
Central cavity
Bright rim
to cool and fade away. The radiation

strips electrons from atoms in the nebula.
Suddenly, the nebula fluoresces and
becomes easy to observe. The objects
luminosity rises abruptly. Instead of
reflecting a small portion of the stars
total light, the nebula converts about half
of the radiation into visible light. This
brightening, coupled with their longer
lifetimes and ever-growing diameters,
make most planetary nebulae much easier to find than preplanetary nebulae.
Back to the puzzle board
The success of the first models of planetary nebulae elated astronomers in the
1990s, but it didnt last long. As Hubble
produced more images, the complexity of
the structures soon led to humility. Weve
made a good start, but the quest to
understand the shapes of planetary nebulae continues. Of particular interest are
the small knots, which dont readily form
in the lovely, regular patterns. Another
area of interest is planetary nebulae with
more than one symmetry axis. And then
theres the question of shapes.
The same shapes appear for planetary
nebulae as for preplanetary nebulae
round, elliptical, and butterfly. However,
half of the preplanetary nebulae are ellipticals with dust lanes cutting through
their centers. For planetary nebulae, only
10 percent are bipolar, and none show
dust lanes. Something happens to morph
or distort their shapes, providing astronomers another challenge. Astronomers
also wonder why planetary nebulae have
such a narrow range of shapes.
The shapes are also strikingly symmetrical. One popular idea is that a companion star exerts a gravitational tug on
the loosely bound outer layers of a red
giant star, or perhaps the giant swallows
its companion when it starts to bloat.
In the former case, the tidal forces on
the outer layers drag them toward the
rapidly orbiting companion star for the
duration of the final helium flash. However, by the time the giants material
reaches the companion, it has moved on.
So most of the material just keeps going
outward in a spiral pattern, like water
from a sprinkler. This forms a tightly
wound one-armed spiral in a thin disk.
Moreover, some of the material falls onto
the companion and forms an accretion
disk around it if the companion star is
Magnetic fields (left, yellow lines) become twisted as a star about to form a planetary nebula
rotates. Charged particles spiral along the yellow lines as they flow outward. The fields guide these
particles along the stars spin axis. The white and red regions of the right panel show where the particles will flow. The white rectangular area at the center is probably the only region sufficiently dense
enough for Hubble to detect. Both images: Sean Matt (University of Virginia)/Adam Frank and Eric G. Blackman (Rochester University)
dense. Highly aligned outflows can arise

from any accretion disk, even those in
young stars, as the swirling material generates magnetic fields.
If the red giant swallows its companion, the small star acts like an eggbeater
as it follows a spiral descent into the stars
heart. This, too, will form a disk that
shapes the nebula. But the merger of two
orbiting stars can also account for other
puzzling shapes of the final ejection.
First, the merger provides a way of
extracting and harnessing the momentum of the companions orbit and transferring it into the dense winds from
which the planetary nebula forms. Second, the merger will disrupt the red
giants core. This might explain why the
largest ejection is also the final one. In
particular, an entire stars worth of
hydrogen fuel landing on the extremely
hot core might trigger a conflagration.
Another mechanism for shaping planetary nebulae may be magnetic fields
released by convection. Red giants have
deep convection, but generally not deep
enough to dredge material out of the
core. This changes during a helium flash.
The extreme heat acts like a gas flame
under a pot of water. The flash causes
deep material to rise quickly. If that
material consists of magnetized gas, as
we expect, then, as the gas surfaces, the
star ejects and distorts it while its still
connected to the stars spinning surface.
But field lines stretch like rubber
bands. Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD)
models, which study moving magnetized
fluids, reveal strange behaviors. MHD

models require huge computers, clever
programming methods, and shrewd
guesses about the ways magnetic fields
permeate the gas and exit the stars surface. The enterprise is in its infancy, and
results dont always agree, so it is premature to draw vast conclusions. However,
the range of outcomes explains some of
the more complex nebular shapes, except
for one thing: The energies and momentums of the predicted outflows are
smaller than the observations require.
Looking forward
The beauty and symmetry of planetary

nebulae please the eye and challenge the
brain. We largely understand stellar evolution until the end. Thats when we hit
the limit of our understanding of the
shapes and energies of mass-ejection.
Stellar mergers and magnetized winds
can solve some problems. New ideas will
enter the discussion. For now, even with
Hubble and other tools, its too soon to
tell if were barking up the right trees.
Future instruments, especially the
Atacama Large Millimeter Array
(ALMA) under construction in Chile,
will allow us to map the dust and possibly
the magnetic fields in preplanetary nebulae. Such studies will provide essential
data and propel the research for years to
come. But for now, public, amateur, and
professional astronomers will continue to
enjoy the poetry of planetary nebulae
even if we havent figured out how stars
manage to write it.
www.Astronomy.com
43
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www.Astronomy.com
35
Stars on the Sun

On September 1, 1859, two
British astronomers independently observed a rare
and powerful flare on the
Suns disk. It was this eruption that launched round
two of the solar superstorm.
Richard Carrington and
Richard Hodgson were
observing sunspots by projecting the Suns image onto
a screen. Carrington had
completed drawing sunspot
groups when, at 11:18 a.m.
Greenwich Mean Time, he
noticed two patches of

intensely bright and white
light near the largest group.
Hodgson described the
flare as a brilliant star of
light, much brighter than
the Suns surface, and most
dazzling to the protected
eye. The show ended 5
minutes later.
In that time, Carrington
noted, the patches of light
moved some 35,000 miles
(56,000 km) across the Suns
disk. He saw no changes to
the spots themselves, and

concluded that the phenomenon took place at an
elevation considerably
above the general surface
of the Sun.
What these observers
couldnt see, of course, was
the massive CME this flare
launched toward Earth. But
Carrington suggested the
flare might be related to the
exceptional magnetic storm
that followed 17 hours later.
Francis Reddy
Richard Carrington sketched the massive white-light flare he witnessed September 1,

1859. The eruption began at the locations marked A and B. The eruption subsided 5 minutes later at points C and D. Linda Hall Library
This CME had everything going for

it. It was fast: In just 17 hours, the cloud
swept across the entire inner solar system at a speed of 5 million mph (8 million km/h). The dense wall of plasma
also possessed a southward-pointing
magnetic field, which enhanced its
potential impact. At 4h40m UT September 2, part of this monster plasma cloud
brushed past Earth.
Our planet resides in a protective bubble created by its magnetic field and ions
trapped inside it. Within minutes of the
clouds impact, the entire Sun-facing
hemisphere of Earths magnetic bubble
was compressed until it reached the outer
atmospheres fringes. The blow instantly
36 Astronomy September 08
affected the ozone layer, reducing this

ultraviolet-absorbing gas so much by
about 5 percent that it took years to
recover to pre-storm levels.
The night-side portion of Earths
magnetic field became a complex, tangled web of field lines trying to sort
themselves out within an enormous volume of space. This magnetic upheaval,
invisible to the human eye, may have
continued for more than a day.
From the ground, spectacular crimson
aurorae could be seen as far south as
equatorial Central America and Bombay,
India. Predictably, people mistook the
lights for distant cities on fire, or imagined them as specters dancing in glee
Magnetic loops arch above solar active regions

June 9, 2007. These areas of intense magnetism
often are sources of solar storms. NASA/STEREO
over some celestial battle. They stood

and gawked by the millions and wrote
detailed eyewitness accounts to newspapers. Miners awoke after midnight and
broke camp, thinking dawn had arrived.
Thousands of people comfortably read
newspapers under the night skys wavering crimson glow.
In this pre-Civil War era, telegraph
outages and instrument fires proved to be
the only technological impact. The currents generated underground by the
storms shifting magnetic and electric
fields were so powerful they set fires in
telegraph offices on both sides of the
Atlantic. In Washington, D.C., they
nearly electrocuted telegraph operator
Frederick Royce.
Today, the calamity such a storm
would cause would have no historical
precedent. At no other time has the web
of technology so completely engulfed our
day-to-day lives. Billions of people are in
close personal contact with the technologies most prone to space weathers
effects. Luckily, superstorms seem to be
rare events for a star like our Sun.
Deep freeze
Deep within ice crystals in Greenland

and Antarctica, nitrate molecules have
collected in trapped gases since 1561.
Scientists Michael Smart, Donald Shea,
and Kenneth McCracken at the U.S. Air
Force Research Lab at Wright-Patterson
Air Force Base, Ohio, and the University
of Maryland discovered that nitrate concentrations rise and fall with solar activSten Odenwald is a professor of astronomy at
Catholic University in Washington. He is an avid
science popularizer and author.
This Hinode image provides the sharpest-ever look into a modest sunspot about 4 times Earths
size. Rising and falling cells of hot gas create the mottled appearance, called granulation, of the
Suns normal surface. Sunspots appear dark because their strong magnetic fields suppress rising
columns of hot gas and allow the spots to cool. JAXA/NASA/Hinode
ity. Nitrates are a particularly good

barometer of powerful radiation storms
called solar proton events (SPEs). In the
450 years covered by the frozen record,
the biggest SPE was the 1859 superstorm.
The satellite industry uses the storm
event that occurred August 4, 1972, as
its worst case. According to the nitrate
record, 19 events more intense than this
storm have occurred since 1561. In
addition, they occurred, on average, in
23-year intervals.
The August 1972 event, which was
one-fourth as strong as the superstorm,
is the only one that even comes close to
its power since 1965. In fact, during the
last 4 decades, the Sun has produced the
fewest large SPEs of any 40-year span
back to 1670.
So, if you wanted to build satellites to

endure the rigors of the space environment, the solar storms of the past 40
years are the wrong examples to use. In
truth, things can get much nastier than
these storms indicate.
Scientists cant predict when one of
these superstorms will occur. Heres
what we can expect if Cycle 24 launches
one our way.
The next superstorm
The superstorm likely would come sometime between 2010 and 2012, near the
peak of the Suns activity cycle. The most
favorable months would be March
or September,
the
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Enormous sunspots more than 10 times Earths

diameter peppered the Sun in October 2003.
These spots launched the record-breaking Halloween solar storms. NASA/ESA/SOHO
during the equinoxes, when solar storms

can more easily impact Earth.
The first warning sign might be the
presence of a large, distorted sunspot
group. Scientists expect dozens of small
X-ray flares (classed as X-1 and up) from
such systems. They also can produce a
few moderate-intensity (X-10 and up)
flares. These occurrences signal highly
disturbed magnetic conditions within the
spot. Each flare would cause notable
short-wave radio blackouts, but only
amateur radio operators and some emergency services might take notice.
www.Astronomy.com
37
This composite of Solar and Heliospheric

Observatory images shows the Suns disk
in ultraviolet light and the tail end of a
coronal mass ejection (CME) blasting into
space. These enormous eruptions launch
billions of tons of ionized gas across the
solar system. Those directed Earths way
can affect satellites, radio communications, and power systems. NASA/ESA/SOHO
Unless the sunspot group launched

a white-light flare visible to lucky amateur and professional solar observers,
the first to see the eruption would be an
armada of aging solar research satellites,
such as Hinode, STEREO, and the Solar
Dynamics Observatory.
An intense blast of X rays and energetic particles would black out every
sensor system in space on Earths daylight side. The X-ray pulse also would
destroy the atmospheres ionized Dlayer. This would instantly black out
38 Astronomy September 08
short-wave broadcasts across the hemisphere facing the Sun.

The entire Arctic region, perhaps
extending to the Great Lakes, would
experience a Polar Cap Absorption
event, where a flood of solar protons
knocks out most radio communications.
This would be an instant hazard to air
travel and lead to days of delays and
costly flight rerouting.
As in 1859, the atmosphere would
lose 5 or 10 percent of its ozone layer,
which would raise skin cancer rates in
the following years. And the night sky

would blaze bright enough to confuse
animals and let humans read beneath
eerie auroral glows.
If the superstorm arrived as a socalled double-barreled CME, the first
would dazzle Northern Hemisphere skywatchers with spectacular aurorae rivaling those produced by 2003s Halloween
Storms. The second punch, launched
perhaps a day later, would race through
the inner solar system and arrive at
Earth within 20 hours.
At impact, all geosynchronous satellites outside Earths protective magnetic

bubble would find themselves immersed
in a turbulent magnetic plasma they
werent designed to endure for long.
Accelerated by shock waves in the CME,
a tremendous pulse of fast-moving protons would race ahead of the cloud and
arrive 12 hours earlier. The radiation
instantly would invade satellite circuitry.
Satellite controllers would record thousands of glitches, some serious enough to
end the hardwares operational life.
In a few hours, the effects on satellites
alone could result in a loss of $20 billion
in revenue and resources. U.S. Defense
Department satellites also would be
blinded by varying degrees. The Global
Positioning System would report inaccurate positions for a day or more, impacting precision navigation, oil drilling, and
some military operations.
As the proton storms particles
enter Earths
tricity for days or even weeks. Insidious

magnetic storm currents would damage
transformers. Replacements would be
hard to come by because no domestic
suppliers exist.
A 2003 blackout in the northeastern
United States involved 50 million people
and 12 states and Canadian provinces,
and cost $6 billion over a 24-hour
period. During a superstorm event, such
effects might linger for a week or more.
The cost could exceed $20 billion a day
in lost salaries, spoiled food, and other
collateral effects.
Making headlines
Newspaper accounts often described the

last centurys solar storms. On March 25,
1940, the Boston Globe ran the headline
U.S. Hit by Magnetic Storm in 2-inch
type above the fold.
ellites
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in lost
atmosphere, they
would initiate nuclear reactions
with oxygen and nitrogen atoms. The
result would be showers of high-speed
neutrons, many of which would reach the
ground. Computer systems would crash
as so-called sudden event upsets violate
the integrity of binary information stored
in memory.
Lucky break?
Despite this grim scenario, we might

actually luck out. Half the time, a CMEs
magnetic field is oriented north, which
minimizes its interaction with Earths
magnetic field. Such a storm would pass
by with only moderate impact.
Then again, our luck could go the
other way. According to John Kappenman, an electric power engineer at
MetaTech Corporation in Goleta, California, a solar storm as severe as one that
occurred in 1921 would affect all of North
America in an unprecedented blackout.
More than 150 million would lose elec-
Editors banked heavily

on the average reader knowing what a
magnetic storm was. Back then, many
people did.
Since the 1950s, solar storms have all
but vanished from the front page. Those
that make it to print lack details of specific incidents, which mutes their human
impact. For instance, the historic March
13, 1989, storm blacked out Quebec for
12 hours and cost several billion dollars.
Yet this remarkable cosmic event was
never mentioned in major U.S. papers.
Its ironic that were now far more vulnerable to major solar storms. They now
tend to be regarded by the public as
entertainment and nighttime spectacle,
rather than their historically demonstrated capacity to do serious harm. For
instance, the solar storm of September
18, 1946, caused navigation errors that
led to a famous plane crash in Gander,
Newfoundland, which killed 26 passengers and crew.
The previous sunspot cycle Cycle
22 was quite eventful. It led to
a costly period
On December 5 and 6, 2006, as solar cycle 23

approached its activity minimum, two powerful X-ray flares exploded on the Suns limb. The
X-ray imager aboard the GOES 13 weather satellite captured this view of the first flare, rated
X-9, and experienced slight damage during the
event. NGDC/NOAA
of satellite outages and losses totaling, by

some estimates, nearly $3 billion. Satellite industry trade journals spoke about
insurance brokers struggling under
billion-dollar annual payouts. Collectively, commercial satellites lost about 3
years of their operational lifespan, which
translates to tens of billions of dollars in
lost profit. There also were several incidents with U.S. electrical power grids,
some of which found themselves pushed
to near-blackout conditions.
Yet, over the past 5 years, the U.S.
Congress has steadily reduced National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration funding for maintaining and
improving our space-weather forecasting
ability. The $6 million annual budget
pays for operation of the Space Weather
Prediction Center in Boulder, Colorado.
Its forecasts, which are used by thousands
of companies and government agencies
each year, save an estimated $200 million
annually. If this doesnt seem like a bargain, factor in safeguarding the $500 billion in annual revenues generated by the
power industry and satellite commerce.
Our next national blackout could
come as a surprise, even though the technology needed to alert us was used during the previous solar cycle. If the cosmic
dice fall the wrong way when the Suns
activity peaks again, we may well look
back at Cycle 23 as the good old days.
See movies of the Sun from the
Hinode solar observatory at
www.astronomy.com/toc.
The evolving solar system
Earths
deadly
future
BLACK SMOKERS are bastions of life at

hydrothermal vents in todays oceans. They
get their names from the soot-like look of
the mineral-rich material they eject. NOAA
A brightening Sun will boil the

seas and bake the continents a
billion years from now. But thats
nothing compared with what
we can expect further down
the road. BY Richard Talcott
he first things to go will be

Earths glaciers and polar
ice caps. Warming surface
temperatures will turn
ice to water, leading to a
slow but steady rise in sea levels. But it
doesnt stop there. Eventually, temperatures will rise high enough for seawater
to boil away, leaving Earth bereft of this
vital substance. With that, life on our
world will need to relocate underground
or emigrate from our home planet.
This apocalyptic scenario is more
than an inconvenient truth its our
inevitable destiny. And it has nothing
to do with changes humans may work
on our fragile environment. The agent
for this transformation is far beyond
our control. The culprit: our current
life-sustaining source of heat and
energy, the Sun.
Ask most people familiar with
astronomy when to expect this coming
apocalypse, and youll hear answers of
around 5 billion years once the Sun
swells into a red giant. But the end is
nearer than that. The Sun is currently
growing brighter, and has been since
the day it was born.
Life on the main sequence

A BILLION YEARS FROM NOW, the Suns
increasing luminosity will have boiled off
most of Earths water. In this view, water
exists only in deep ocean trenches, where
thermophilic bacteria cling to life. Lynette Cook
When the Sun was a baby, it was rather

miserly by todays standards. It emitted
roughly 30-percent less energy then
than it does now. The Sun officially
became a star when it started fusing
www.astronomy.com
29
Planets on the move

Mercury
0.38 AU
Sun
Today
Venus
0.72 AU
Earth
1.00 AU
Mars
1.52 AU
Sun and planetary orbits shown
to scale; planet sizes not to scale
6.5 billion years from now

Sun as red giant
0.88 solar-mass
Venus
0.93 AU
Earth
1.17 AU
Mars
1.85 AU
6.7 billion years from now

Sun as asymptotic giant
0.66 solar-mass
Earth
1.61 AU
Mars
2.46 AU
As the SUN ages, it will lose some of its mass. This trend will accelerate when it becomes a red giant, and grow even greater when it
swells into an asymptotic-giant-branch star. This mass loss will cause the orbits of the planets to migrate outward. Astronomy: Roen Kelly
hydrogen into helium in its core. These

nuclear reactions release energy according
to Einsteins famous equation: E=mc2. This
energy source defines any stars main
sequence life where it spends the vast
majority of its days.
We tend to think of a main sequence
star like the Sun as constant, but its not.
It maintains what astronomers call hydrostatic equilibrium the outward pressure
exerted by the cores hot gas balances the
inward crush of gravity. If the Suns central
temperature were to drop slightly, for
example, the gas pressure would also fall.
Gravity then would force our star to contract and heat up, restoring its equilibrium.
The Sun started life as a uniform mix
of approximately 73-percent hydrogen,
25-percent helium, and 2-percent heavier
elements, by mass. The outer parts of the
Sun still maintain that balance. But in the
core, where nuclear fusion rules, helium
levels continuously rise. Since the Suns
birth, about 5 percent of its total mass has
been converted into helium.
Richard Talcott is a senior editor of Astronomy.
30 astronomy
july 07
And thats the rub. The nuclear reactions

in the Suns core essentially convert four
hydrogen atoms into one helium atom. Gas
pressure, however, depends in part on the
number of particles in the gas. The ongoing
fusion reduces the number of particles, so
the pressure drops. To maintain hydrostatic
equilibrium, the Sun must compensate. The
core shrinks, raising both the temperature
and density. That, in turn, increases the rate
of nuclear reactions, and the Sun generates
even more energy.
These changes operate slowly. Although
a hundred million years may sound like a
long time, for the Sun, its a blip on the
radar screen, representing 1 percent of its
life span. And in a hundred million years,
the Suns luminosity rises less than 1 percent. The energy increase prompts the Sun
to expand at a comparably lethargic pace.
Its diameter grows at about the same rate as
human fingernails: 1 to 2 inches per year.
Crystal-ball gazing
If the Sun is warmer now than it was in the

past, what were conditions like on Earth a
few billion years ago? Surprisingly, they
werent much, if any, colder. Thats good

news as far as life is concerned. The first
single-cell organisms arose some 3.5 billion
years ago, and they presumably required
liquid water. But the Sun wasnt hot enough
by itself to melt terrestrial ice until roughly
2 billion years ago.
We can thank our lucky stars for the
greenhouse effect. The presence of water
vapor and carbon dioxide in the atmos
phere warms our planet well above what it
would otherwise be. Even today, Earth is
some 60 Fahrenheit (33 Celsius) warmer
than it would be without greenhouse
warming. In the distant past, when Earths
interior was hotter and volcanic eruptions
likely belched significantly more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the effect
would have been greater.
The push to higher solar luminosities
continues. Roughly 1 to 2 billion years
from now, Earths surface temperature
will approach the point of no return,
when water will start evaporating and
herald an end to above-ground life.
Several unknowns affect the timing.
Most important: The fraction of greenhouse
gases the atmosphere will contain. Most

scientists expect the level of atmospheric
carbon dioxide to drop in the distant future.
This will come about as photosynthetic
organisms extract carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere and weathering incorporates
some of it into silicate rocks, which then
are subducted into the mantle.
As the oceans start to evaporate, the
Suns high-energy ultraviolet radiation
will break the water molecules into their
constituents, hydrogen and oxygen. The
lightweight hydrogen gas will escape
Earths gravitational hold and bleed into
space. It might take another billion years
for ocean water to disappear completely,
but by then, any remaining life will have
had to make other plans.
One viable option might be Mars. As
Earth becomes too warm for most life to
survive, the Red Planet should be getting
balmy. If humans can make it till then, Mars
would offer some attractive real estate.
Into the deep future
To this distant point, the Sun and Earth

have taken nearly opposite paths. Even a
billion or two years from now, the Sun will
look basically the same on the outside as it
does now a little bigger and brighter, but
still recognizable. The Suns internal structure, however, will have changed markedly.
Its center will be largely helium, although
lots of hydrogen will exist in the core. The
hydrogen continues to fuse into helium and
add to that elements growing abundance.
For Earth, on the other hand, the surface would hardly be recognizable. Our
pale blue dot will be more of a muted
brown, and blistering temperatures will
make it uninhabitable. But the deep interior
wont see much effect. Although it will have
cooled modestly as the total mass of radioactive elements decreases, a 21st-century
geologist would still recognize it.
But as time continues to march on,
changes in the Sun and the rest of the solar
system will become more pronounced. The
real changes start roughly 5 billion years
from now, when the Sun exhausts the
hydrogen fuel in its core and prepares to
leave the main sequence. As the Sun takes
its first tentative steps into old age, it will
shine some 70-percent brighter than it does
now. That wont last long, however.
The Suns inner core then will contain
only helium. Itll be hot (some 50 million
Kelvin) and dense (10,000 times the density
ICY EUROPA could prove to be a watery haven in the distant future, when increasing
solar radiation will render the inner planets uninhabitable. NASA/JPL
Location, location, location

When the South Pole feels more like the Amazon jungle a few billion years from now, any
life on Earth will be looking for a way out. The Suns increasing luminosity will render Earth
uninhabitable, and worried eyes will look skyward.
In a reversal of science-fiction proportions, the first stop may well be Mars. Unlike H. G.
Wells classic novel, in which dying Martians looked longingly toward a more hospitable
Earth, earthlings may decide to head for cooler martian climes. Mars has a distinct advantage: Not only will it likely serve as humans first permanent outpost in the solar system,
but it also holds the promise of being clement for an extended period.
But even Mars will grow too hot once the Sun becomes a red giant. Then, the only
reasonable outposts will be on the moons of the gas-giant planets. Several of them
including Jupiters Io, Europa, and Ganymede, and Saturns Enceladus, Rhea, and Dione
already come with huge complements of ice. Raise the Suns temperature significantly,
and all may afford ocean-front property at some future point.
But the reality of the Suns demise is that by the time Jupiter or Saturn become viable
abodes, any surviving civilization should seek other solar systems. After several billion
years of calling Sol home, a few million extra years wont seem like much. It will be time
to become citizens of the galaxy. R. T.
of water) there, but not extreme enough to

ignite helium. Meanwhile, hydrogen in the
outer core will continue to burn.
With no source of energy at the center,
the core will contract and heat up. Like
adding gasoline to a fire, the increased heat
will cause the hydrogen-burning shell to
kick into overdrive. As the Suns luminosity
jumps, the overlying layers will expand and

cool. The star will be on its way to becoming a red giant.
Monster star
It will take the Sun between 1 and 1.5 billion

years to evolve from the close of its main
sequence life to a full-fledged red giant. By
www.astronomy.com
31
A RED-GIANT SUN looms over a dead and

waterless planet Earth some 6 billion years
in the future. Lynette Cook for Astronomy
32 astronomy
july 07
then, its surface temperature will have

dropped to around 3,500 K, just over half of
what it was on the main sequence. The cool
surface will mean the star radiates most of
its energy at longer wavelengths, in the red
part of the spectrum. Still, the Sun will put
out 1,000 times more energy than today.
To release this much energy from a
cooler surface requires the Sun to swell dramatically. As a red giant, it will appear 100
times bigger than today, taking it beyond
Mercurys orbit and swallowing the innermost planet. If any people were to visit
Earth on a spaceship from the more temperate outer solar system, they would see
the Sun as a bloated red sphere spanning
some 50 of the sky. If our planet still
rotated once every 24 hours, it would take
the Sun more than 3 hours to rise and set.
In reality, Earths rotation will have slowed
significantly by then, lengthening sunrise
and sunset further.
In the red giants distended outer layers,
gravity will be so weak that the solar wind
will blow a million times stronger than it
does today. During the course of its redgiant phase, the Sun will lose approximately
10 percent of its total mass.
This gradual mass loss will reduce the
Suns overall gravitational pull, so it no
longer will hold the planets as tightly. The
planets will spiral outward a bit except
for Mercury, of course, which already will
have succumbed to the Suns appetite.
As hydrogen continues burning in a
shell, itll dump more helium ash onto the
inner core. Eventually, the temperature at
the center will rise to 100 million K hot
enough to ignite helium. The Sun will tap
into this second energy source with a vengeance, fusing helium into carbon and
some oxygen in its core while still fusing
hydrogen to helium in a surrounding shell.
Ironically, the initiation of helium fusion
will lower the Suns luminosity as it causes
the core to expand and cool. The star as
a whole will shrink, and its surface will
warm. It will stay in this stable configuration for approximately 100 million years.
Two bright stars visible from Earth
Aldebaran and Arcturus are at this stage
of evolution now.
Supersize me
As with all nuclear reactions, a small temperature increase causes a big jump in the
reaction rate. Thats why the Sun will burn
through its helium fuel so rapidly. Then,
WHEN THE SUN DIES, it will puff off its outer layers in a final blaze of glory. The resulting
planetary nebula, like NGC 2440 seen here, will last about 50,000 years. NASA/ESA/K. Noll (STScI)
its dj vu all over again. Carbon ash will

build up in the center, surrounded by a
helium-burning shell which, in turn, will
be surrounded by a hydrogen-burning
shell. Once more, the core will contract,
heating the interior and spiking the nuclearreaction rates. The star swells again; but
this time, itll grow even bigger and more
luminous than on the first go-round. It is
now an asymptotic-giant-branch star.
At the height of this phase, the Sun will
be 500 times its current diameter and swell
beyond the current orbit of Mars. Its outer
layers will claim their second victim as they
swallow Venus. But the Sun also loses mass
at a greater rate this time around, turning
the solar wind into a full-blown hurricane.
The Suns mass will drop to two-thirds of
what it is now, and Earths orbit will grow
by approximately 60 percent.
Current computer models cant tell
whether Earth will survive the onslaught
or not it looks to be a close call. Mars
should make it easily, although its days of
relative tranquility will be long over. The
best place to be could be on one of the
moons of the outer planets. They may enjoy
a brief period of springlike weather. And
with large stores of ice currently on some
of them, precious water could be plentiful.
The Suns internal instability during this

asymptotic-giant-branch stage will cause
our star to pulsate with a period measured
in hundreds of days. It will be a Mira variable star, named after the prototype star in
the constellation Cetus.
In just a few tens of thousands of years,
the Sun will puff off its outer layers. The
Suns core, made of carbon and oxygen,
will be left behind as a white-dwarf star.
The star then will contain more than half
the Suns current mass compressed into a
sphere the size of Earth a density equivalent to crushing a car to the size of a grape.
The white dwarf will have an initial temperature of 100,000 K, so itll emit lots of
ultraviolet light. This high-energy radiation
will energize the expanding shell that was
previously the Suns outer layers, causing it
to glow. This planetary nebula will light up
for about 50,000 years before the shell dissipates into the interstellar medium. Meanwhile, the remnant white dwarf will slowly
but steadily cool off, eventually extinguishing the light that nurtured billions of years
of life in the solar system.
To watch a simulation of the Suns
ONLINE evolution in the distant future, visit
EXTRA
www.astronomy.com/toc.
www.astronomy.com
33
Turning up the heat
Can we send
a spacecraft to
the Sun?
NASAs proposed Solar Probe
stretches technology and
material science to their torrid
limits. BY david j. mccomas
ne day perhaps as early as 2014 a

spacecraft will depart Earth on a voyage
of solar exploration. Measuring 8.9 feet
(2.72 meters) across and 30.8 feet (9.4m) long, Solar
Probe would encounter solar-corona temperatures
averaging 3,600,000 Fahrenheit (2,000,000 Celsius)
as it passes within 1.3 million miles (2.1 million kilometers) of the Suns surface.
This mission would answer some of the most vexing questions about our star: What heats the corona
(the Suns outer atmosphere) to millions of degrees?
How does the corona transition into the supersonic
outflow of ionized gas known as the solar wind?
SOLAR PROBES close approach to the Sun will test its thermalprotection system. Here, the glowing cone points toward the Sun
and shields the spacecrafts instruments. LYNETTE COOK FOR ASTRONOMY
www.astronomy.com
43
SOLAR ECLIPSES once were the only way to study the Suns
corona. During totality, the Moon covers the solar photosphere
(the Suns visible disk), leaving only its delicate outer atmosphere
in view. During the February 26, 1998, eclipse, observers could see
inclined streamers and polar plumes. NCAR/HIGH ALTITUDE OBSERVATORY
To the Sun finally
The Sun remains our solar systems only

unvisited realm, half a century after the
Space Age began. Weve sent probes to all
the planets, and Voyagers 1 and 2 are now
exploring the solar systems boundary, the
heliosphere. But so far, no mission has gotten close to our star.
Technology finally exists to change that.
Consider the immense design challenges
for such a spacecraft. It must endure the
extreme temperatures and radiation near
the Sun. At Solar Probes planned orbit to
within 3 solar radii of the Suns surface, the
spacecraft must endure more than 3,000
times the Suns heat at Earths distance.
The space scientists and engineers planning the Solar Probe mission borrowed
heat-resistant-material technology from
missiles and the space shuttle to fashion a
cone-shape thermal-protection system. The
cone will shade the spacecraft as it penetrates the solar corona.
This proximity to the Sun will allow revolutionary measurements and images that
will greatly expand our knowledge of the
corona and solar wind. Solar Probe would
make direct, on-the-scene measurements
right where the Sun energizes its most hazardous solar particles. The spacecraft also
would help us characterize, and even foreDavid J. McComas is the senior executive
director of the Space Science and Engineering
Division at the Southwest Research Institute in
San Antonio.
44 astronomy
December 06
THIS CLOSE-UP of the Suns lower corona shows loops of hot

plasma traveling along magnetic field lines. Without special equipment (or a total solar eclipse), however, we cant see the corona
because its only one-millionth as bright as the Suns photosphere.
STANFORD-LOCKHEED INSTITUTE FOR SPACE RESEARCH/NASA
cast, the changing radiation environment in

which future space explorers will work.
Thanks to unprecedented advances in
imaging, theory, and modeling, we now
know more about the corona and the solar
wind than ever before. And yet, solar physics two fundamental questions remain
unanswered. The only way to find out why
the corona is so much hotter than the Suns
surface, and how the solar wind accelerates,
is to collect data near the Sun.
The Solar Probe mission is rooted in the
National Research Councils 2003 decadal
survey of solar and space physics. This
study stressed the scientific importance of a
solar mission and recommended that it be
implemented as soon as possible.
In late 2003, NASA formed a Solar
Probe Science and Technology Definition
Team. The teams official report, issued in
September 2005, outlined a $1 billion mission that could launch in about a decade
and provide an acceptably low-risk survey
of the near-Sun environment. Funding of a
mission of this scale will require special
congressional appropriations.
If NASA and Congress fund Solar

Probe, it stands to become the first spacecraft to venture into the inner heliosphere,
where the solar wind is born. Through
direct measurement and imaging of the
regions plasma, energetic particles, and
fields, Solar Probe would provide the data
needed to solve the twin mysteries of coronal heating and solar-wind acceleration.
Keeping Solar Probe cool
At its closest approach to the Sun, Solar

Probe will endure solar energy much more
intense than at Earth. The design and evaluation of a thermal-protection system
(TPS) that will shield the spacecraft in this
environment are the central foci of the
Solar Probe teams efforts.
The planned TPS consists of three components. The primary heat shield is a hollow cone about 9 feet (2.7m) in diameter
and 17 feet (5.1m) tall made of carboncarbon composite with a ceramic coating.
This shield protects the sensitive instruments and spacecraft subsystems from
direct exposure to solar radiation.
IMAGES FROM the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) show the coronas evolution during the rising phase of a solar cycle. As activity increases, streamers originate from
higher solar latitudes, not just the Suns equator. SOHO
Protecting Solar Probes instruments
9 Rs
+ 8h
Primary shield
7.4 Rs
Support struts
+ 6h
5.9 Rs
+ 4h
4.6 Rs
Secondary shield
THIS SCHEMATIC of the Solar Probe spacecraft shows the three main
components of the thermal-protection system: the primary and secondary shields and the struts. Engineers constructed each component using
a carbon-carbon composite material, which is ultra-heat-resistant.
astronomy: rOEN KELLY, AFTER JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY APPLIED PHYSICS LABORATORY/NASA
The secondary shield is a disk of

carbon-foam layers encased in a carboncarbon jacket and attached to the primary
shields base. It insulates the instruments
from the primary shield, which will reach
temperatures approaching 3,000 Fahrenheit (1,650 Celsius) at perihelion (Solar
Probes closest approach to the Sun).
The third component consists of the
carbon-carbon attachment struts. They
support the TPS and separate it from the
spacecraft bus. The separation prevents the
secondary shield heat from reaching the
bus while providing maximum stability.
Mission scientists conducted thermal
analysis using computer models of the TPS,
combined with experimental testing of candidate materials. The tests demonstrated
the TPS can maintain spacecraft systems at
their normal operating temperatures less
than 120 F (49 C) even during closest
approach to the Sun.
During the proposed and still to be
funded second phase, further testing of
TPS materials and components will be performed, and a full-scale prototype will be
fabricated, assembled, and tested.
One tough spacecraft
Solar Probe is a gyroscope-stabilized vehicle designed to survive and operate in

intense heat. Its most prominent feature
is the cone. Twenty days before closest
approach, when Solar Probe is near Venus
orbital distance, the crafts thrusters will
turn the cone toward the Sun. This provides
4 Rs
+ 2h
Approaching
the Sun
Closest
approach
the protective shadow for

the spacecraft bus and
instruments. Solar Probe
Solar Probe
Sun
orbit
will retain this orientation
throughout its encounter.
solar probes heat
The instrument package
shield points at the Sun
2h
includes instruments both
during closest approach,
4.6 Rs
for direct measurement of
keeping its instruments
the solar environment and for
cool. (RS = solar radii; h =
remote-sensing observations of
hours before () or after (+)
4h
coronal structures. Most of the
closest approach.)
astronomy: ROEN KELLY, AFTER
instrument package will be mounted
5.9 Rs
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY APPLIED
safely inside the heat-protected spacePHYSICS LABORATORY/NASA
craft body. Three instruments, however
6h
a fast-ion analyzer, a fast-electron analyzer, and an ion-composition analyzer
7.4 Rs
will be on a movable arm. This platform will
extend instruments out to nearly the cones
8h
edge then retract them incrementally as the
spacecraft approaches the Sun and the safe
9 Rs
zone becomes smaller. Instruments on the
elliptical
arm will gather data just inside the edge of
orbit. Even
the thermal-protection systems shade.
at that speed,
Meanwhile, a retractable, heat-resistant
the Sun is so
imaging periscope will intermittently poke
large that the spaceout beyond the shadow for quick views of
crafts pole-to-pole pasthe solar winds source regions.
sage takes about 14 hours.
With the trajectory the Solar Probe team
Following its initial pass,
has designed, the spacecraft will make two
Solar Probe will sail out to Jupiters
close approaches to the Sun separated by
orbit before the Suns gravity pulls it
about 412 years. The first will come as Solar back for a return visit along a similar path.
These two approaches, and the interval
Probe shoots past the Suns south pole,
between them, allow the spacecraft to comdives to its closest approach near the solar
pare solar-wind and coronal measurements
equator at 670,000 mph (1.09 million kiloduring opposite phases of the 11-year solar
meters per hour), and then travels outcycle. (Every 11 years, on average, the Sun
bound over the north pole in a highly
www.astronomy.com
45
TRACE the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer spacecraft

currently orbits Earth. TRACEs field of view covers only a fraction of
the solar disk, but by repeatedly repointing, it can create an image of
the Suns entire inner corona. This image shows the solar corona on
August 2, 1999, in a false-color, 3-layer composite. Imaging revealed
46 astronomy
December 06
the corona at a time when the Sun was moderately active, with some
hot (red) active regions in both hemispheres, surrounded by cooler
(green and blue) coronal plasma. In contrast to TRACE, which images
the Sun from Earth orbit, Solar Probe will provide the first-ever closeup views of the Suns corona. STANFORD-LOCKHEED INSTITUTE FOR SPACE RESEARCH/NASA
solar probe: a Long time coming

Scientists first recommended the idea of a near-Sun mission in
1958, less than a year after Sputnik awoke the world to the possibilities of sending human-made hardware into orbit and beyond.
In that year, the National Academy of Sciences Simpson Committee issued recommendations for future missions that the newly
organized NASA should undertake. They included sending a
spacecraft inside Mercurys orbit to measure the Suns particles
and magnetic fields.
Four years later, the Mariner 2 probe to Venus made the first
definitive solar-wind measurements. It confirmed what had been
a controversial theory describing the solar coronas supersonic
expansion. The next decade saw various missions measure solarwind properties from different regions of space but none ventured inside Venus orbit.
In the mid-1970s, the joint U.S.-German Helios project placed
two spacecraft into highly elliptical orbits that ventured a little
closer to the Sun than Mercury. These data remain the closest
measurements of the Sun. But their closest approach was 60
solar radii far outside the corona and the region where solarwind acceleration occurs.
Since then, as new heat-shield materials and spacecraft propulsion systems were developed, NASA conducted several solarmission studies. Some manner of solar probe has remained
consistently at or near the top of various National Science Academy and NASA priority lists. One short-lived plan even proposed
a joint U.S.-Russian mission in the 1990s. D. J. M.
THE SUNS PHOTOSPHERe, or visible surface, is the region were

most familiar with. Only the best solar telescopes, however, deliver
an image like this one. Besides sunspots, dark areas roughly 3,000
F (1,650 C) cooler than the surface, the telescope also resolved
granules, the tops of convective plasma-current cells. G. SHARMER AND
K. LANGHANS, INSTITUTE FOR SOLAR PHYSICS OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, SWEDEN
moves from one period of high activity to

the next.) For example, if Solar Probe
launches in 2014, its first flyby will take
place in 2018, around the solar minimum.
The second flyby, in 2023, will occur during a time of increased solar activity.
Why we need to get close
Thanks to years of observations coupled

with complex modeling and sophisticated
theoretical research, scientists already have
a general picture of how the Suns corona
and the solar wind operate. They know that
at times of lower solar activity, the solar
wind has two components: a dominant,
steady, high-speed wind and a more variable, low-speed wind. Each emanates from
specific coronal zones.
As solar activity increases to solar maximum, this orderly configuration breaks
down into a complex mixture of fast and
slow winds from all areas of the corona.
The energy that heats the corona and drives
the wind manifests itself as motions of
plasma within and around the Sun. Magnetic fields channel, store, and then dissipate these plasma motions. Heliophysicists
believe waves, instabilities, magnetic reconnections, and turbulence all operating
on vast scales play roles in coronal heating and solar-wind acceleration.

Scientists now want to know the geometry and dynamics of the expanding magnetic fields and particle distributions that
lie at the sources of the fast and slow solar
winds. Solar Probe will trace the energy
flow that heats the corona and accelerates
the solar wind. It also will determine what
mechanisms accelerate and transport these
charged particles around the Sun.
As a bonus, Solar Probes unique path
close to the Sun will answer some questions
about the size and mass distribution of
mysterious dust grains orbiting near the
Sun. This dust, believed to originate from
comets and asteroids, interacts with the
corona and may influence the solar wind
and the formation of energetic particles.
Finally, even though Solar Probe will go
where humans cannot, what scientists learn
from the mission will play an important
role in piloted missions to the Moon and
Mars. On these expeditions (well beyond
the protective shield of Earths magnetic
field), astronauts may be exposed to intense
blasts of the Suns energetic particles. Such
events present serious threats to humans
living and working beyond Earth.
Solar Probe will make the first direct

measurements of the near-Sun region, sample the environment where solar plasma
particles are energized, and identify the
seed populations for these dangerous particles. The spacecraft also will provide critical data for predictive models that along
with solar and heliospheric monitoring
will enable scientists to forecast the spaceradiation environment in support of
human exploration.
Solar Probes visit to a never-beforeexplored region of our solar system will
answer questions that simply cant be
answered any other way. The answers will
help space scientists understand whats
going on in a region that has awed and
frightened humans since we first witnessed
the Suns beautiful and mysterious corona
during a total eclipse.
Moreover, as with any voyage into
uncharted territory, Solar Probes journey
also holds the promise of unanticipated
discoveries new mysteries that will challenge humanitys ever-expanding knowledge of our home in the universe.
ONLINE See a Solar Probe animation at
EXTRA www.astronomy.com/toc.
www.astronomy.com
47
Put your eyes to the sky with
ASTRONOMY MAGAZINE
HOW to view Mays unusual SOLAR ECLIPSE p. 48
May 2012
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Opening a new window

Pat Corkery/United Launch Alliance

fter a year in orbit, NASAs

observatory into Earth orbit. Although

1:20 p.m. EDT

1:40 p.m. EDT

2:00 p.m. EDT

their matching orientations. So, within

SDOs three-pronged attack

The Solar Dynamics Observatory uses

offers more information, the line-of-sight

maps the so-called vector magnetic field,

26 Astronomy May 2011

2:20 p.m. EDT

2:40 p.m. EDT

of the spectrum, and seven in the extreme

3:00 p.m. EDT

HMI even saw a sunspot before the

A grand first show

After its launch, SDO took more than a

February 14, 2011

4:45 a.m. EDT

5:15 a.m. EDT

5:45 a.m. EDT

CME. It is vitally important to understand these mechanisms because they

magnetic energy into heat. Solar physicists classify flares as B, C, M, or X (from

SDO takes fresh

The what and how of flares

People have watched solar flares for more

EUV emissions last longer as well. Both of

The magnetic fields behavior

Solar physicists have not yet figured out

6:15 a.m. EDT

was the August 1, 2010, flare and double

Whats ahead for

No one knows how big Solar Cycle 24 will be.

close proximity, SDO scientists still havent

Looking in the crystal ball

Given our current knowledge, predicting

increase in data from missions such as

A billion tons of gas

m OK. Youre OK. But the Sun? It

Frequent contributor Bruce Dorminey is

any age. By contrast, a solar twin must

Spots before our eyes

In time, our true stellar soul mates will

normal solar maximum, you would have

Christoph Scheiner observed the Sun starting

flow migration of the most recent cycle

A new Maunder minimum?

This anomalously long solar minimum raises the question of whether

2700 Fahrenheit (1500 Celsius) cooler

Whether this jet stream is causing the

Earths own climate mechanisms could

Looking to the stars

No matter what causes such events,

Europe suffers a deep freeze

A better place for life?

such grand minima occur in Sun-like

stars are fairly common. But researchers

Because of its relatively short life, the Sun

28 Astronomy June 2010