Unsolved Mystery with our Sun
The seven greatest mysteries of the sun
No star is as well researched as it — but the sun still has many great secrets. Several international missions should now answer the most important questions of solar research
P.M. Magazin
This item is from PM magazine
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Eruptionen, Plasmaströme, Magnetfelder — Für viele Erscheinungen der Sonne gibt es noch keine ErklärungenEruptionen, Plasmaströme, Magnetfelder — Für viele Erscheinungen der Sonne gibt es noch keine Erklärungen
Eruptions, plasma currents, magnetic fields, for many phenomena of the sun, there are no explanations
The thin balloon that is rising in the blue sky over northern Sweden on 12 June 2013, will unfold to enormous size: An Airbus A-380 would have him in place without touching it. But not the interior of this gigantic, helium-filled envelope interested technicians present, but the freight dangling at her. 36 km high they will drawn up by the balloon into the stratosphere. Up there is the largest solar observatory ever to leave the Earth’s surface, some of the secrets unravel, their decryption science waiting for so long. A first attempt four years ago did not go as hoped: While playing with the technology, but the sun does not.
The 30 million euro expensive mission with the name “Sunrise” fell into a period of unusually low solar activity — the observatory could still observe -eruptionen during his nearly six-day stay in the amount not sunspots.
“This time the sun was a little nicer to us,” said Sami Solanki, the director would be at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau near Göttingen. “I’m looking forward to the evaluation of new data.” First results should be available in 2014. Then, the researchers hope they will finally understand how solar storms arise. These explosive eruptions of charged particles can not only damage satellites, but also hit the earth where they ensure power outages or delete electronic data.
If you knew when the solar storms occur, you could, for example, protect satellites in time by being temporarily shut down. The researchers want to predict space weather as accurately as possible. But now quite reliable terrestrial weather forecast they are still lagging far behind. “We watch the sun, recognize an outbreak and then we calculate the approximate direction and speed,” says Sami Solanki. “We would like to say, however, that in exactly one week in the evening at half past seven hits a solar storm on the earth. Of this we are unfortunately far away. “
Even when the sun is seen purely astronomic an ordinary star among many, and although they bargain explored as well applies: you still holds great mysteries. They should now be resolved. Work now and in the coming years in solar research more international teams than ever before. And there has never been on Earth and in space so many missions to explore the sun. Alone at Sunrise project involved eight international banks: three from the USA, two Spanish, two German and one Swedish. Mission is headed by the Max-Planck-Institute in Katlenburg-Lindau.
Six times seven feet tall is the Sunrise observatory. The most important part on board: the telescope with a large mirror can withstand one meter of glass ceramic extreme heat without deforming. Piggyback on the telescope sit instruments that record what the telescope zuspielt them: A high-resolution camera images, for example from structures on the solar surface that are less than a hundred kilometers in size. In relation to the huge total that appears almost as microscopic accuracy. Another instrument measures the strength and direction of magnetic fields on the solar surface.
All this can be better seen from 36 km in height from the surface. Because there obstruct the air masses in the lower atmosphere, the clear view and hold a large part of the sun coming from the ultraviolet radiation; This UV radiation is, however, important to obtain complete results. The magnetic fields, the exact nature of the researchers want to investigate, the driver of the solar storms are. As this engine works in detail is not yet known — and that’s not the only secret the sun.
