Related topics: magnetic field · nasa · space weather · solar wind · spacecraft

The curious case of Earth's leaking atmosphere

Earth's atmosphere is leaking. Every day, around 90 tonnes of material escapes from our planet's upper atmosphere and streams out into space. Although missions such as ESA's Cluster fleet have long been investigating this ...

The effects of solar flares on Earth's magnetosphere

Planet Earth is surrounded by a system of magnetic fields known as the magnetosphere. This vast, comet-shaped system deflects charged particles coming from the sun, shielding our planet from harmful particle radiation and ...

Earth-directed coronal mass ejection from the sun

(Phys.org) —On March 15, 2013, at 2:54 a.m. EDT, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection (CME), a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of solar particles into space and can reach Earth one ...

NASA spacecraft capture an Earth directed coronal mass ejection

On August 20, 2013 at 4:24 am EDT, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, a solar phenomenon which can send billions of tons of particles into space that can reach Earth one to three days later. ...

Recalculating the distance to interstellar space

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists analyzing recent data from NASA's Voyager and Cassini spacecraft have calculated that Voyager 1 could cross over into the frontier of interstellar space at any time and much earlier than previously ...

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Magnetosphere

A magnetosphere is formed when a stream of charged particles, such as the solar wind, interacts with and is deflected by the intrinsic magnetic field of a planet or similar body. Earth is surrounded by a magnetosphere, as are the other planets with intrinsic magnetic fields: Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Jupiter's moon Ganymede has a small magnetosphere — but it is situated entirely within the magnetosphere of Jupiter, leading to complex interactions. The ionospheres of weakly magnetized planets such as Venus and Mars set up currents that partially deflect the solar wind flow, but do not have magnetospheres, per se.

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