SOHO and the Sun—A Revolutionary Relationship
“Solar radiation storms are notoriously difficult to predict—they often take us by surprise,” says physicist Arik Posner who developed the technique. “But now we’ve found a way to anticipate these events.”
In December of 1995, SOHO was launched as Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, responsible for searching out sound waves originating from the Sun, causing a reaction not only on Earth but also in our solar system. Due to combined efforts by NASA and ESA to study the Sun, from its inner deep core to outer corona and solar wind, today a level of protection from the Sun’s CMSs is offered to Earth that has never been offered available before.
SOHO has also become a breakthrough in forecasting solar radiation storms before they reach Earth, a novel technique originating from the COSTEP instrument onboard NASA’s SOHO. A one-hour advance warning is all that is needed in order for shelter seekers, astronauts, space travelers, and ground controllers to reach safety, safeguarding the SOHO satellites or associated satellites when the storm is approaching. Beneath the protective layers of the Earth’s magnetic field there is no problem, but beyond that lives solar storms, where heavy ions pose the most serious of danger to the electronics and humans beyond that protection. Prior to the heavy ions are the electrons, which are the beacons of the night to warn of the coming dangerous ions. But up until recently there have been no way to tell they were coming, for spacecraft and people to prepare themselves.
A physicist by the name of Arik Posner, a member of the research stafrf of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, and also of of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, analyzed hundreds of radiation storms from the COSTEP, Comprehensive Suprathermal and Energetic Particle Analyzer, between the years 1996 to 2002. What he came up with the construction of an empirical, predictive matrix which was able to be used to forecast the arrival time of the dangerous ions from the COSTEP’s electron data. His study, “Up to one-Hour forecasting of Radiation Hazards from Solar Energetic Ion Events,” is published in the Space Weather Journal.
Once the results of his matrix was tested, it was used on the unused COSTEP electron data in 2003 to see if it would work in predicting the storms, which it did. All four major ion storm were successfully predicted with the advance warnings ranged in time from seven to 74 mSOHO and the Sun—A Revolutionary Relationship
“Solar radiation storms are notoriously difficult to predict—they often take us by surprise,” says physicist Arik Posner who developed the technique. “But now we’ve found a way to anticipate these events.”
In December of 1995, SOHO was launched as Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, responsible for searching out sound waves originating from the Sun, causing a reaction not only on Earth but also in our solar system. Due to combined efforts by NASA and ESA to study the Sun, from its inner deep core to outer corona and solar wind, today a level of protection from the Sun’s CMSs is offered to Earth that has never been offered available before.
SOHO has also become a breakthrough in forecasting solar radiation storms before they reach Earth, a novel technique originating from the COSTEP instrument onboard NASA’s SOHO. A one-hour advance warning is all that is needed in order for shelter seekers, astronauts, space travelers, and ground controllers to reach safety, safeguarding the SOHO satellites or associated satellites when the storm is approaching. Beneath the protective layers of the Earth’s magnetic field there is no problem, but beyond that lives solar storms, where heavy ions pose the most serious of danger to the electronics and humans beyond that protection. Prior to the heavy ions are the electrons, which are the beacons of the night to warn of the coming dangerous ions. But up until recently there have been no way to tell they were coming, for spacecraft and people to prepare themselves.
A physicist by the name of Arik Posner, a member of the research stafrf of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, and also of of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, analyzed hundreds of radiation storms from the COSTEP, Comprehensive Suprathermal and Energetic Particle Analyzer, between the years 1996 to 2002. What he came up with the construction of an empirical, predictive matrix which was able to be used to forecast the arrival time of the dangerous ions from the COSTEP’s electron data. His study, “Up to one-Hour forecasting of Radiation Hazards from Solar Energetic Ion Events,” is published in the Space Weather Journal.
Once the results of his matrix was tested, it was used on the unused COSTEP electron data in 2003 to see if it would work in predicting the storms, which it did. All four major ion storm were successfully predicted with the advance warnings ranged in time from seven to 74 minute, with only three false alarms. At the present time, SOHO’s COSTEP instrument has been operating over a complete solar cycle, lasting 11.1 years on the average, and presently is still being successfully used.
inute, with only three false alarms. At the present time, SOHO’s COSTEP instrument has been operating over a complete solar cycle, lasting 11.1 years on the average, and presently is still being successfully used.
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