First 3-D Pictures of Solar Explosions Created

 

 

Ionized helium rises from the sun on September 29, 2008, in an image from the STEREO stereo spacecraft.

Other STEREO pictures are being used to create the first 3-D images of solar storms, NASA said in April 2009. The 3-D images should help shorten warning times for harmful space weather headed for Earth.

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Twin satellites have captured the first 3-D pictures of solar storms, NASA announced today.

The new technology will allow for earlier warnings about solar storms that can disrupt GPS signals and power grids, damage satellites, and bombard astronauts with solar radiation, experts said.

The new data come from the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO), a pair of spacecraft deployed in fall 2006. Not unlike human eyes, the satellites' two points of view allow for combination images that render scenes in three dimensions.

So far, the STEREO siblings have imaged solar storms, aka coronal mass ejections, aka CMEs. (See solar storm pictures from the STEREO craft.)

"Before this unique mission, measurements and the subsequent data of a CME observed near the sun had to wait until the ejections arrived at Earth, three to seven days later," said Angelos Vourlidas, a solar physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington and a STEREO project scientist, in a statement.

"Now we can see a CME from the time it leaves the solar surface until it reaches Earth, and we can reconstruct the event in 3-D directly from the images," added Vourlidas, who presented the new findings during a teleconference with other mission scientists. Their work will be published in an upcoming special issue of the journal Solar Physics.

Image courtesy NGC, NASA