Per la prima volta, un velivolo spaziale, STEREO della NASA, lontano dalla Terra, ha potuto riprendere una tempesta solare diretta verso il nostro pianeta. L’espulsione di massa coronale dal sole, il rilascio di plasma (CME) è solitamente responsabile dell’incredibile spettacolo delle Aurore Boreali, apparse gli scorsi mesi anche a basse latitudini, grazie al nostro “mantello protettivo”, ovvero il campo magnetico terrestre.
Per monitorare l’attività solare:
La pagina NASA dedicata a STEREO
NOAA – NWS Space Weather Prediction Center
For the first time, a spacecraft far from Earth has turned and watched a solar storm engulf our planet. The movie, released today during a NASA press conference, has galvanized solar physicists, who say it could lead to important advances in space weather forecasting.
NASA’s STEREO spacecraft and new data processing techniques have succeeded in tracking space weather events from their origin in the sun’s corona to impact with the Earth, resolving a 40-year mystery about the structure of the structures that cause space weather: how the structures that impact the Earth relate to the corresponding structures in the solar corona.
Credit: NASA/STEREO/Scott Wiessinger
Image: The Aurora Australis as seen from the Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-39.
