Heating the solar wind

(Phys.org) —The Sun glows with a surface temperature of about 5500 degrees Celsius. Meanwhile its hot outer layer (the corona) has a temperature of over a million degrees, and ejects a wind of charged particles at a rate ...

Deciphering the mysterious math of the solar wind

(Phys.org)—Many areas of scientific research—Earth's weather, ocean currents, the outpouring of magnetic energy from the sun—require mapping out the large scale features of a complex system and its intricate details ...

Cassini sheds light on cosmic particle accelerators

(Phys.org)—During a chance encounter with what appears to be an unusually strong blast of solar wind at Saturn, NASA's Cassini spacecraft detected particles being accelerated to ultra-high energies. This is similar to the ...

Night-time view of Aurora

(Phys.org)—Overnight on October 4-5, 2012, a mass of energetic particles from the atmosphere of the Sun were flung out into space, a phenomenon known as a coronal mass ejection. Three days later, the storm from the Sun ...

Voyager observes magnetic field fluctuations in heliosheath

As they near the outer reaches of the solar system, for the past several years the two Voyager spacecraft have been sending back observations that challenge scientists' views of the physics at the edge of the heliosphere, ...

The mysterious case of asteroid Oljato's magnetic disturbance

(Phys.org)—Back in the 1980s, the arrival of asteroid 2201 Oljato inside the orbit of Venus heralded a flurry of magnetic activity. Now, results from ESA's Venus Express spacecraft suggest that Oljato has lost its magnetic ...

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