A solar flare is a relatively intense, localized emission of electromagnetic radiation in the Sun's atmosphere. Flares occur in active regions and are often, but not always, accompanied by coronal mass ejections, solar particle events, and other eruptive solar phenomena. The occurrence of solar flares varies with the 11-year solar cycle.
Loren Wilber Acton is an American physicist who flew on Space Shuttle mission STS-51-F as a Payload Specialist for the Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratory. He is also the father of Cheryll Glotfelty, a leading ecocritic.
Space weather is a branch of space physics and aeronomy, or heliophysics, concerned with the varying conditions within the Solar System and its heliosphere. This includes the effects of the solar wind, especially in the Earth's magnetosphere, ionosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere. Though physically distinct, space weather is analogous to the terrestrial weather of Earth's atmosphere. The term "space weather" was first used in the 1950s and popularized in the 1990s. Later, it prompted research into "space climate", the large-scale and long-term patterns of space weather.
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is a European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft built by a European industrial consortium led by Matra Marconi Space that was launched on a Lockheed Martin Atlas IIAS launch vehicle on 2 December 1995, to study the Sun. It has also discovered over 4,000 comets. It began normal operations in May 1996. It is a joint project between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. SOHO was part of the International Solar Terrestrial Physics Program (ISTP). Originally planned as a two-year mission, SOHO continues to operate after over 25 years in space; the mission has been extended until the end of 2025, subject to review and confirmation by ESA's Science Programme Committee.
Solar physics is the branch of astrophysics that specializes in the study of the Sun. It deals with detailed measurements that are possible only for our closest star. It intersects with many disciplines of pure physics, astrophysics, and computer science, including fluid dynamics, plasma physics including magnetohydrodynamics, seismology, particle physics, atomic physics, nuclear physics, stellar evolution, space physics, spectroscopy, radiative transfer, applied optics, signal processing, computer vision, computational physics, stellar physics and solar astronomy.
STEREO is a solar observation mission. Two nearly identical spacecraft were launched in 2006 into orbits around the Sun that cause them to respectively pull farther ahead of and fall gradually behind the Earth. This enabled stereoscopic imaging of the Sun and solar phenomena, such as coronal mass ejections.
The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) is a NASA mission which has been observing the Sun since 2010. Launched on 11 February 2010, the observatory is part of the Living With a Star (LWS) program.
Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) mission began in February 2007 as a constellation of five NASA satellites to study energy releases from Earth's magnetosphere known as substorms, magnetic phenomena that intensify auroras near Earth's poles. The name of the mission is an acronym alluding to the Titan Themis.
Heliophysics is the physics of the Sun and its connection with the Solar System. NASA defines heliophysics as "(1) the comprehensive new term for the science of the Sun - Solar System Connection, (2) the exploration, discovery, and understanding of Earth's space environment, and (3) the system science that unites all of the linked phenomena in the region of the cosmos influenced by a star like our Sun."
Living With a Star (LWS) is a NASA scientific program to study those aspects of the connected Sun-Earth system that directly affect life and society. LWS is a crosscutting initiative with goals and objectives relevant to NASA's Exploration Initiative, as well as to NASA's Strategic Enterprises. The program is managed by the Heliophysics Science Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
The Heliophysics Science Division of the Goddard Space Flight Center (NASA) conducts research on the Sun, its extended Solar System environment, and interactions of Earth, other planets, small bodies, and interstellar gas with the heliosphere. Division research also encompasses geospace—Earth's uppermost atmosphere, the ionosphere, and the magnetosphere—and the changing environmental conditions throughout the coupled heliosphere.
NASA Heliophysics is an aspect of NASA science that enables understanding the Sun, heliosphere, and planetary environments as a single connected system. In addition to solar processes, this domain of study includes the interaction of solar plasma and solar radiation with Earth, the other planets, and the galaxy. By analyzing the connections between the Sun, solar wind, and planetary space environments, the fundamental physical processes that occur throughout the universe are uncovered. Understanding the connections between the Sun and its planets will allow for predicting the impacts of solar interaction on humans, technological systems, and even the presence of life itself. This is also the stated goal of Science Mission Directorate's Heliophysics Research.
Solar phenomena are natural phenomena which occur within the atmosphere of the Sun. They take many forms, including solar wind, radio wave flux, solar flares, coronal mass ejections, coronal heating and sunspots.
Richard R. Fisher is an American astrophysicist who worked in academia and at NASA. He retired in 2012.
The Miniature X-ray Solar Spectrometer (MinXSS) CubeSat was the first launched National Aeronautics and Space Administration Science Mission Directorate CubeSat with a science mission. It was designed, built, and operated primarily by students at the University of Colorado Boulder with professional mentorship and involvement from professors, scientists, and engineers in the Aerospace Engineering Sciences department and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, as well as Southwest Research Institute, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research's High Altitude Observatory. The mission principal investigator is Dr. Thomas N. Woods and co-investigators are Dr. Amir Caspi, Dr. Phil Chamberlin, Dr. Andrew Jones, Rick Kohnert, Professor Xinlin Li, Professor Scott Palo, and Dr. Stanley Solomon. The student lead was Dr. James Paul Mason, who has since become a Co-I for the second flight model of MinXSS.
NASA's Solar Terrestrial Probes program (STP) is a series of missions focused on study the Sun-Earth system. It is part of NASA's Heliophysics Science Division within the Science Mission Directorate.
Nicola J. Fox is the Associate Administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Appointed to the position in February 2023, she is therefore NASA's head of science. She was previously the Director of NASA's Heliophysics Science Division. Fox was the lead scientist for the Parker Solar Probe, and served as the Science and Operations Coordinator for the International Solar-Terrestrial Physics Science Initiative.
Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) is a future mission by NASA to study the unexplored region from the middle of the solar corona out to 1 AU from the Sun. PUNCH will consist of a constellation of four microsatellites that through continuous 3D deep-field imaging, will observe the corona and heliosphere as elements of a single, connected system. The four microsatellites were initially scheduled to be launched in October 2023, but they have since been moved to an April 2025 launch in rideshare with SPHEREx.
Peter Thomas Gallagher is an Irish astrophysicist. He specialises in solar physics, notably solar storms and their impact on the Earth. He is Senior Professor, and Head of Astronomy and Astrophysics, at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, director of Dunsink Observatory, and an adjunct professor at Trinity College Dublin. He is also the head of the radio-telescope project I-LOFAR, at Birr Castle. He is widely cited in his field and often quoted in the media.
Dr Natchimuthuk "Nat" Gopalswamy is an Indian American Solar physicist. He is currently a staff scientist at the Heliophysics Division of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
