Browse Archive

  • Located between approximately 40-110 miles (60-180 kilometers) above the Earth's surface, the MLTI region is sensitive to external influences from the sun above and atmospheric layers below it.

    Ten Successful Years of Mapping the Middle Atmosphere

    TIMED has collected data over almost an entire solar cycle, which lasts about 11 years, creating a new picture of Earth's environment as well as how it responds to changes in the sun.

  • Illustration of technological infrastructure affected by space weather events.

    Space Weather Workshop

    Five scientists speaking at a workshop at the 2011 Fall AGU meeting in San Francisco on Tuesday, December 6 at 10 AM PST will discuss the complex -- and relatively new -- research area of space weather.

  • Artist concept of Voyager 1 encountering a stagnation region

    NASA's Voyager Hits New Region at Solar System Edge

    NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region between our solar system and interstellar space.

  • Schematic illustration of the invisible magnetic field lines of Earth, represented as a dipole magnet field.

    Pole Reversal Happens All The (Geologic) Time

    Earth's magnetic field has flipped its polarity many times over the millennia -- but this causes no dramatic effects, and will not lead to problems in 2012.

  • Still from video showing how atmospheric waves generated by lightning can escape Earth's atmosphere.

    Lightning-made Waves Leak Into Space

    Lightning bursts create electromagnetic waves that circle around Earth creating a low frequency wave called Schumann resonance. These have now been detected in space and can be used to study our atmosphere.

  • A picturesque lake reflects a beautiful green aurora in North Pole, Alaska.

    FASTSAT Paints Detailed View of Region Near Earth

    FASTSAT has painted a detailed picture of the dynamic region around Earth, showing a host of interrelated phenomena -- such as electric currents and outflowing particles occurring together.

  • SOHO captured this image of a solar flare in wavelength 195 as it erupted from the sun early on Tuesday, October 28, 2003. This was the most powerful flare measured with modern methods.

    2012: Killer Solar Flares Are a Physical Impossibility

    Some people speculate gigantic natural disasters that will destroy Earth as we know it on December 21, 2012 -- but a killer solar flare is a physical impossibility.

  • Artist's concept shows NASA's two Voyager spacecraft exploring a turbulent region of space known as the heliosheath

    Voyager 2 to Switch to Backup Thruster Set

    NASA's Deep Space Network personnel sent commands to the Voyager 2 spacecraft today to switch to the backup set of thrusters that controls the roll of the spacecraft.

  • Vivid orange streamers of super-hot, electrically charged gas (plasma) arc from the surface of the Sun, revealing the structure of the solar magnetic field rising vertically from a sunspot.

    Hinode's First Light . . . and Five More Years

    Five years after its instruments turned on, Hinode has provided some of the highest resolution images of the sun the world had ever seen -- as well as help solve such mysteries as why the sun's atmosphere is a thousand times hotter than its surface.

  • Eleven years in the life of the Sun, spanning most of solar cycle 23, as it progressed from solar minimum to maximum conditions and back to minimum (upper right) again, seen as a collage of ten full-disk images of the lower corona.

    Solar Cycle Primer

    The number of sunspots on the sun increase and decrease over time in a regular, approximately 11-year cycle. More sunspots mean increased solar activity, when great blooms of radiation and particles blast off the sun.