![]() "The first image from METIS that Daniele showed suggested to me almost immediately the cartoons that we had drawn in developing the mathematical model for a switchback," Zank said in the statement.Īccording to Zank's modeling, switchbacks can occur above sunspots when some of the distorted magnetic lines break and connect with magnetic lines that are open and connected with the interplanetary magnetic field in the solar system. Solar Orbiter, which approaches the star more cautiously, coming only as close as one third of the sun-Earth distance, is equipped with both types of sun-observing sensors direct imaging. As if trying to get the orbiter’s attention as it cosied up to another body in the Solar System, the Sun flung an enormous ' coronal mass ejection ' straight. The observation seemed to match mathematical models of switchback triggering developed previously by Gary Zank, a space physicist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. In the early hours of Sunday, 4 September, Solar Orbiter flew by Venus for a gravity-assist manoeuvre that alters the spacecraft’s orbit, getting it even closer to the Sun. It will take three years to reach this orbit. Telloni was the one who first spotted the structure in the data captured by METIS on March 25, only a few days before Solar Orbiter's closest approach to the sun to date. Solar Orbiter has been placed into an elliptical orbit around the sun coming as close to 26 million miles away from the star every five months - even closer than Mercury. "I would say that this first image of a magnetic switchback in the solar corona has revealed the mystery of their origin," Daniele Telloni, a solar physicist at the National Institute for Astrophysics in Torino, Italy, said in a statement (opens in new tab). ![]() By comparing images taken by Solar Orbiter's instruments at various wavelengths of light, scientists realized the strange phenomenon took place just above an active sunspot, a cooler region on the sun's surface where the star's magnetic field is twisted and dense. The Solar Orbiter mission is designed to study the suns outer atmosphere, called the corona, and determine how the sun interacts with the heliosphere, a bubble full of charged particles released. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |