CME
Nile
STEREO/IMPACT
CSE @ SSL
News + Events
archive 2007

Archive 2007

Nov 29 , 2007

The STEREO science center now has the real-time IMPACT and SWAVES data up. Check out their website to see what the solar wind and solar magnetic field (interplanetary magnetic field) is doing right now, as measured by the two STEREO satellites. Today the Sun is still VERY quiet. We are in solar minimum and there are no waves to be seen, the magnetic field data is relatively steady, and there are very few high energy particles - just the normal solar wind is blowing out with its magnetic field, past Earth and all the other planets in our solar system.

Oct 24, 2007

Naked Science - "Solar Force" TV show, which prominently features STEREO will be premiering on the National Geographic Channel Oct. 30 at 9:00 ET. Check out this link for more information. After this time, the program will replay a number of times.

Oct 15, 2007 The Sun has been incredibly quiet. Only coronal holes have opened up the Sun to connect high speed particles that interact with Earth's magnetic field to add energy to Earth's magnetosphere, enhancing auroras. This has been a great time for the STEREO team to study these coronal holes and streamers and other things, like the interaction of the solar wind with comets. To read more about a case when STEREO saw a comet's tail get swept away but the solar wind, visit NASA's STEREO mission web site or the New Scientists' web page.

Mary Quinn playing solar music while holding a model of STEREO

August 9, 2007 Marty Quinn of Quinn Arts, plays his solar music while holding a model of the STEREO spacecraft. Mr. Quinn is working with the STEREO Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) teams to create a museum exhibit that takes the STEREO data and turns it in music.
View the full resolution image.

June 25, 2007 A new Flash animation has been added to STEREO-Impact In the Classroom. See what happens to the Earth and the STEREO satellites during a coronal mass ejection (CME).

Apr 23, 2007 Check out the first STEREOscopic images released at NASA's STEREO site.

Mar 14, 2007 The education sounds project has created a new page with STEREO IMPACT and SWAVES data. Listen to the newest STEREO data on this "Latest sounds of STEREO" website.

The scientific instruments on the STEREO satellites are still be tested to make sure they are working correctly. From these tests, it appears that the STEREO A satellite will not have a working Solar Wind plasma Electron Analyzer (SWEA) instrument, but the STEREO B satellite's SWEA is working well and should provide important data to the science team. Some instruments are already providing data that

Mar 12, 2007 No human has ever witnessed a solar eclipse quite like this: NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft was about a million miles from Earth last month when it photographed the Moon passing in front of the sun. The resulting movie looks like it came from an alien solar system. Read the full story at Science@NASA Headlines.

Note that this story is wrong in its explanations of the STEREO calibration. The SOHO release on the 1999 transit of Mercury got it right:
"The difficulty in obtaining accurate data from coronal measurements is caused by the amount of light coming from the solar disk (much brighter than the dim corona) that bounces around inside the instruments. This scattered light is also referred to by scientists as stray light.
"From SOHO's perspective, 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, the closest approach of Mercury to the Sun was at an angle of about 92 arc seconds. The planet passed just above the disk, right in front of the corona. By so doing, the planet intercepted a small part of the coronal light."
"Whatever is not black inside the shadow image of Mercury is scattered light inside the instrument. Distinguishing between light from the solar disk and that from the corona will allow more refined measurements of the corona.
"

Feb 28, 2007 This page has been updated with a link to the NASA animation and graphics page for STEREO. Visit that on the left if you would like to find STEREO animations and graphics to use for free.

Feb 22, 2007 IMPACT produces its first science nugget about a Solar Energetic Particle event and Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) measured by the STEREO IMPACT instruments December 5-16th. This event was somewhat surprising because of the current quiet state of the Sun, near the minimum phase of its activity cycle. To read the science nugget, visit the IMPACT science news and events page.

Jan 22, 2007 STEREO has now started its science mission! The STEREO satellites completed a series of complex maneuvers using the moon's gravity to position the spacecraft in their mission orbits around the Sun. The spacecraft will be in position to produce the first 3-D images of the sun by April. The Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) has a full press release with photos, which can be found at: here.

Jan 25 , 2007 Baltimore Examiner posted this article about STEREO today. The Baltimore Sun also wrote an informative article about the STEREO mission. See Articles section.

Jan 23 , 2007 A press release from The Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University about the STEREO mission as well as STEREO's recent swing past the Moon. See Articles section.

Nov 29, 2006 An article from BBC News about newly captured images of the sun's surface - "Probe's close-up of Sun eruption" - in the Articles section.

Nov 17, 2006 P2 burns on STEREO A & B were both very successful. The instruments were turned off for an eclipse at perigee (about 25 minutes). Both spacecraft came out of eclipse without any problems. All the instruments were turned back on without problems. The A2 burn & P2 burn look so good on spacecraft A that the spacecraft will not need to do any more burns. It is now on a trajectory to get to lunar swingby and its 22 degree drift orbit. The spacecraft B has two lunar swingbys, so it is much more sensitive to errors. The mission may have to do one more burn on spacecraft B closer to the lunar encounters.


Upcoming Events

NASA/NSTA Web Seminar
Dr. Therese Kucera, a solar physicist working at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, will be giving an NSTA web seminar on Solar Activity and Space Weather Dec. 14, 6:30-8:00 EST. The target audience is teachers of grades 4-9. Pre-registration is required, but anyone can sign up. This is part of an on-going series of web seminars.

STEREO on Discovery HD
STEREO will be featured on Discovery HD Dec 29 at 10:00pm. They will be using a lot of video products that Walt Feimer and APL created to support STEREO.

Teacher Professional Development Workshops
We hold regular teacher professional development workshops at the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley. These workshops are free and cover a wide range of space science concepts. Check out the workshops webpage to find out more, including what workshops are coming up soon.


Articles About STEREO - IMPACT

 Internet IconProbe's close-up of Sun eruption
HTML article published at BBC News
- 6 December 2006
 
 Internet IconA 3-D Look at The Sun's Eruptions
HTML article published at Popular Science
- 13 November 2006
 Internet IconUnderstanding our angry Sun
HTML article published at The Baltimore Sun
- 25 August 2006
 Internet IconThe SUN in STEREO
HTML article published at Astrobiology Magazine
- 20 August 2006
Internet IconSolar explosions in 3D
HTML article published at Physics Web
- 19 July 2006
Internet IconStereo satellites will let scientists tune in to the sun's mood music
HTML article published at The Guardian
- 18 July 2006
Internet Icon3-D views of Sun will allow forecast of 'space weather'
HTML article published at The Times of London
- 18 July 2006
Internet IconPress Release
HTML article published at Eurek Alert
- 17 July 2006
Internet IconNASA: Checking out the sun in STEREO
HTML article published at The Register
- 17 July 2006
Internet IconSky Guy: Preparing for the first-ever stereoscopic study of solar outbursts
HTML article published at Knoxnews
- 10 April 2006
JPG IconDunya Gozunu Antalya'ya Dikti
JPG image article published in Turkish Newspaper Milliyet
- 972KB, 17 Feb 2006


current news | archive 2006 | archive 2005 | archive 2004 | archive 2003 | archive 2002 | archive 2001 | archive 2000