Mother Nature Network

See the sun up close in live webcast today

The online Slooh Space Camera, which organizes live views of the sun and night sky through telescopes around the world, will hold a free webcast today at 2:30 p.m. EST. The webcast will feature live views of the sun as seen through a telescope at the Prescott Observatory in Arizona.

How scientists study the sun’s light

The ability to track the colors of the sun helps scientists to study how solar material moves around the sun’s atmosphere.

NASA scope reveals sun’s ‘magnetic braids’

The outer atmosphere far above the sun’s surface is actually hotter by a thousandfold than the surface, even in the absence of solar flares, and these braids may explain it.

Small sun activity changes still affect Earth’s climate

In addition to scientific data, tree rings and ice cores can help link sun’s behavior to earth’s change in climate.

Massive sun eruption may magnify northern lights this week

Solar wind blaze shot out of sun at 990,000 mph and should reach Earth by Wednesday.

Giant sun eruption could swallow 20 Earths

The most powerful solar flares can interfere with satellite communications, pose a risk for astronauts and damage power system infrastructure on Earth.

Sun’s 2013 solar storm peak expected to hit century low

NASA uses three different satellites to track solar activity coming our way.

spaceplasma:

How Super-Tornadoes Heat Up Sun’s Atmosphere

Astronomers have puzzled over where the heat comes from to warm the sun’s atmosphere. While the surface of the sun is a relatively cool 5,000 degrees, the atmosphere, called the corona, can be millions of degrees hotter.

A study of data from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory has led scientists to conclude that it could be huge vortices, called solar super-tornadoes, on the sun’s surface that are conducting the heat out to the corona. One of these vortices can be five times as wide as the entire Earth.

One of these mega-twisters can form where the sun’s magnetic field lines connect the surface of the sun to the low corona. The scientists have calculated that a solar super-tornado can transport the energy required to heat the corona to temperature that is observed.

Fourteen of these solar super-tornadoes have been directly observed, but there could be more than 10,000 present at any given moment, transporting energy up from the surface of the sun to its atmosphere.

Credit: Karl Tate / SPACE.com

How early Earth kept warm despite faint sun

Research pointing to the collision of certain molecules to keep Earth warm may expand the parameters of habitable exoplanets.

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How Super-Tornadoes Heat Up Sun’s Atmosphere