The Carrington Flare
On September 1st, 1859, (151 years ago today) a 33 year old astronomer called Richard Carrington, working at an observatory in Surrey, England, went about his daily duties of sketching the peculiar...
View ArticleThe Launch of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (part 1)
Getting out of Washington DC was not going to be easy. The city was bracing itself for the biggest snowstorm in almost a century over the weekend. The launch of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO; the...
View ArticleThe Launch of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (part 2)
Thursday morning seemed to take longer to arrive. Expectations were certainly higher, based in no small part on the fact that most of us had flights booked to take us home later that day. Washington DC...
View ArticleHappy 10th RHESSI!
Ten years ago yesterday (5 February 2002) saw the launch of the Reuven Ramaty High-Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager, or RHESSI (pronounced reh-see). RHESSI was designed to study particle acceleration...
View ArticleDo solar flares cause earthquakes?
We have been getting a number of questions and comments lately regarding the possible relationship between solar activity and geological activity, such as earthquakes and volcanoes, so I have decided...
View ArticleX17 Solar Flare and Solar Storm of October 28, 2003
On this day in 2003 (October 28), the Sun unleashed one of the largest and most geoeffective solar storms of the modern age (and consequently, one of the most studied). The eruption was part of what...
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