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Heading for the Sun

It is almost 5 billion years old, and it is perhaps the key ingredient for life on Earth. Join us for a tour of the Sun!

Posted by Tormod Guldvog
13 September, 2001 04:09:48

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It has been burning for some 5 billion years, and will probably keep shining for another 6 billion years. The Sun is a rather normal star, which means that there are plenty of other stars in our Universe which have the same characteristics as the Sun.

For ages, mankind has worshipped the Sun and its life-giving light and heat. It has long been understood that the Sun is the most important ingredient to create life on Earth. Still, over the past few decades, new research is showing that there is a larger interplay between the Sun and the Earth than we could imagine.

For example, scientists just recently discovered that the Earth is enclosed in a huge magnetic field in which energy travels from the Earth to the Sun.

Several probes have been launched to explore the Sun. Perhaps the most successful so far, has been SOHO, which has provided us with some rather stunning images of our mother star.

This week we take a look at some research and news which should bring you up-to-date on solar exploration.

Related Links

The very latest SOHO images
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime-images.html
This is a great gallery, part of the SOHO website, which features continually updated images of the Sun.

Windows to the Universe: The Sun
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/cgi-bin/tour.cgi?link=/sun/sun.html
This website is like an encyclopedia with which you can tour the Sun, asnwer Sun questions and find images and historical information. Not that you can select your knowledge level, from beginner to advanced.

SOHO Reveals the Secrets of the Sun
http://www.sciam.com/specialissues/0398cosmos/0398lang.html
Although it is from 1998, this article in Scientific American gives a lot of excellent background information on SOHO, the solar observatory.

Virtual Sun
http://www.michielb.nl/sun/kaft.htm
This is a website made by a graduate student at the University of Amsterdam. It includes a tour of the Sun with photos, text and movies.

SOHO: The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/
The entry page for a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

Solar Probe
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ice_fire/sprobe.htm
The Solar Probe is going to the Sun twice, first in 2010, then again in 2015, to perform breakthrough studies of the Sun's atmosphere.

To hell and back
http://www.newscientist.com/features/features.jsp?id=ns22741
This is a feature article from New Scientist about the Solar Probe and how it is being constructed.

Solar Max 2000
http://www.exploratorium.com/solarmax/index.html
A guide to the year of the active sun.

The Solar Interior
http://wwwssl.msfc.nasa.gov/ssl/pad/solar/interior.htm
Ever wondered what the Sun looks like on the inside? NASA gives you the details on this page.

Ulysses program
http://ulysses.jpl.nasa.gov/
The Ulysses spacecraft was launched in 1990, and is circling the sun in a polar orbit. The craft's primary mission is to study the heliosphere, the vast region of interplanetary space occupied by the Sun's atmosphere and dominated by the outflow of the solar wind.

HESSI Home Page
http://hesperia.gsfc.nasa.gov/
This is Goddard Space Flight Centers mission page for the spacecraft HESSI, which will study solar flares by using X-rays.