...the who's who,
and the what's what 
of the space industry

Space Careers

news Space News

Search News Archive

Title

Article text

Keyword

  • Home
  • News
  • Sounding rocket CLASP2 elucidates solar magnetic field

Sounding rocket CLASP2 elucidates solar magnetic field

Written by  Saturday, 20 February 2021 01:50
Write a comment
Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Feb 19, 2021
Cooperative operations between a solar observation satellite and a sounding-rocket telescope have measured the magnetic field strength in the photosphere and chromosphere above an active solar plage region. This is the first time that the magnetic field in the chromosphere has been charted all the way up to its top. This finding brings us closer to understanding how energy is transferred b

Cooperative operations between a solar observation satellite and a sounding-rocket telescope have measured the magnetic field strength in the photosphere and chromosphere above an active solar plage region.

This is the first time that the magnetic field in the chromosphere has been charted all the way up to its top. This finding brings us closer to understanding how energy is transferred between layers of the Sun.

Despite being the brightest object in the sky, the Sun still holds many mysteries for astronomers. It is generally believed that magnetic fields play an important role in heating the solar corona, but the details of the process are still unclear.

To solve this mystery it is important to understand the magnetic field in the chromosphere, which is sandwiched between the corona and the photosphere, the visible surface of the Sun.

An international team led by Ryohko Ishikawa, an assistant professor at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, and Javier Trujillo Bueno, a professor at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, analyzed data collected by the CLASP2 sounding rocket experiment over twosix-and-a-half-minutes on April 11, 2019.

They determined the longitudinal component of the magnetic field above an active region plage and its surroundings by analyzing the signature that the magnetic field imprinted on ultraviolet light from the chromosphere.

The unique high precision data from CLASP2 allowed the team to determine the magnetic field strengths in the lower, mid, and upper regions of the chromosphere. Simultaneously acquired data from the Japanese solar observation satellite Hinode provided information about the magnetic field in the plage itself in the photosphere.

The team found that the plage magnetic field is highly structured in the photosphere but expands, rapidly merging and spreading horizontally, in the chromosphere. This new picture brings us closer to understanding how magnetic fields transfer energy to the corona from the lower layers of the Sun.

Research Report: "Mapping Solar Magnetic Fields from the Photosphere to the Base of the Corona"


Related Links
National Institutes Of Natural Sciences
Solar Science News at SpaceDaily

Tweet

Thanks for being there;
We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain.

With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords.

Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year.

If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.

SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter
$5+ Billed Monthly

SpaceDaily Contributor
$5 Billed Once

credit card or paypal



SOLAR SCIENCE
Ball Aerospace to build spacecraft for NASA Heliophysics Science Mission
Boulder CO (SPX) Feb 10, 2021
Ball Aerospace was selected to build the spacecraft for NASA's Global Lyman-alpha Imager of the Dynamic Exosphere (GLIDE) heliophysics science Mission of Opportunity. GLIDE will study variability in Earth's exosphere, the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere where it touches space, by tracking far ultraviolet light emitted from hydrogen. Dr. Lara Waldrop of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is the principal investigator for GLIDE and University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is man ... read more


Read more from original source...

You must login to post a comment.
Loading comment... The comment will be refreshed after 00:00.

Be the first to comment.

Interested in Space?

Hit the buttons below to follow us...