NASA SDO: Tracking a gigantic sunspot across the Sun

Super sunspot AR2192 produced 10 significant solar flare while traversing the Earth-side of the sun; six X-class and four above M5-class. 

Credit: NASA/SDO

An active region on the sun, an area of intense and complex magnetic fields, rotated into view on Oct. 18, 2014.

Labeled AR2192, it soon grew into the largest such region in 24 years, and fired off 10 sizable solar flares as it traversed across the face of the sun.

The region was so large it could be seen without a telescope for those looking at the sun with eclipse glasses, as many did during a partial eclipse of the sun on Oct. 23.

"Despite all the flares, this region did not produce any significant coronal mass ejections," said Alex Young a solar scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland."

"Coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, are giant clouds of solar particles that can affect technology when they reach near-Earth space."

"You certainly can have flares without CMEs and vice versa, but most big flares do have CMEs. So we're learning that a big active region doesn't always equal the biggest events."

The largest sunspot since November 1990 is seen traveling across the front of the sun in these images from NASA's SDO, captured Oct. 17-Oct 29, 2014. 

Credit: NASA/SDO

Such active regions are measured in millionths of a solar hemisphere, where 1 micro-hemisphere, or MH, is about 600,000 square miles.

This region topped out at 2,750 MH, making it the 33rd largest region out of approximately 32,000 active regions that have been tracked and measured since 1874.

It is the largest sunspot seen since AR 6368, which measured 3,080 MH on Nov. 18, 1990.

The largest five active regions ever observed were between 4,000 and more than 6,000 MH and they all appeared between 1946 and 1951.

On the other hand, the region that produced one of the biggest solar flares of all time on Sep. 1, 1859, in what's known as the Carrington event, wasn't even one of the top 50 at only 2,300 MH.

During its trip across the front of the sun, AR 12192 produced six X-class flares, which are the largest flares, and four strong M-class flares. M-class flares are one tenth as strong as X-class flares.

The number provides more information about its strength. An M2 is twice as intense as an M1, an M3 is three times as intense, etc.

"Having so many similar flares from the same active region will be a nice case study for people who work on predicting solar flares," said Dean Pesnell, project scientist for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory at Goddard.

"This is important for one day improving the nation's ability to forecast space weather and protect technology and astronauts in space."



This movie shows fireworks on the sun as 10 significant flares erupted on the sun from Oct. 19-28, 2014. 

The graph shows X-ray output from the sun as measured by NOAA’s GOES spacecraft. The X-rays peak in sync with each flare. 

Credit:  NASA/SDO/NOAA/GOES

AR 12192 rotated onto the far side of the sun on Oct. 30, 2014, however as it evolves, we may see a new version of it rotating back into view in two weeks.

NASA Aqua MODIS Tracking Super Typhoon Vongfong

Super Typhoon Vongfong pictured from the ISS by NASA Astronaut Reid Wiseman.

The MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured this visible image of Super Typhoon Vongfong on Oct. 9 at 04:25 UTC (12:25 a.m. EDT as it moved north through the Philippine Sea. 

Credit: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Super Typhoon Vongfong as it tracked through the Philippine Sea on Oct. 9.

The MODIS instrument aboard Aqua captured visible and infrared images of the now Category 4 Super Typhoon.

Two instruments aboard NASA's Aqua satellite provided visible and infrared data on the Super Typhoon: The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument, respectively.

MODIS captured a visible image of Super Typhoon Vongfong on Oct. 9 at 04:25 UTC (12:25 a.m. EDT) that showed two concentric eyewalls with the inner eye diameter at 26 nautical miles.

Forecasters at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center noted that the eye remains symmetrical with sharp outlines - typical of very intense cyclones.

The AIRS data showed the overall cloud top temperatures had warmed a little since yesterday, Oct. 8, indicating that the uplift in the storm may be weakening.

AIRS also showed a thick band of powerful thunderstorms surrounded Vongfong's eye.

Vongfong weakened to a Category 4 typhoon on the Saffir-Simpson scale on Thursday, October 9, with maximum sustained winds near 130 knots (149.6 mph/240.8 kph), down from a Category 5 typhoon on Oct. 8.

Forecasters at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center predict slow weakening over the next several days.

A colorised satellite photo shows Super Typhoon Vongfong spinning in the western Pacific Ocean.

Credit Photo: NASA /NOAA /CIRA /RAMMB

Vongfong was centered near 20.6 north and 129.5 east, about 384 nautical miles south-southeast of Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan.

It is moving to the north-northwest at 7 knots (8 mph/12.9 kph) and generating 44 foot (13.4 meter) high seas. For warnings and watches, visit the Japan Meteorological Agency website.

Vongfong is forecast to continue moving north through the Philippine Sea and is expected to pass just to the east of Kadena Air Base, then track over Amami Oshima before making landfall in Kyushu and moving over the other three big islands of Japan.

Residents of all of these islands should prepare for typhoon conditions beginning on October 10.

The AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured infrared data on Super Typhoon Vongfong and showed powerful thunderstorms (purple) circled the center in a wide band on Oct. 9, 2014. 

Credit: NASA JPL, Ed Olsen

Russia's Cosmos 2495: Fiery Fall of Russian Spy Satellite Debris

A global network of skywatching detectives has pieced together the strange story of a Russian military spy satellite that re-entered Earth's atmosphere earlier this month, the leftovers of which sparked a spectacular sky show over five U.S. states.

Observers across parts of Montana, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico caught sight of debris from the military satellite via a fireball on Sept. 2 around 10:30 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time, reporting their observations to the American Meteor Society.

The focus of attention is Russia's Cosmos 2495, an Earth-imaging reconnaissance (Kobalt-M) satellite. It was a hefty spacecraft, in the Kobalt-M series, a family member of the Yantar chain of Russian satellites. Russia launched the satellite on its intelligence-gathering mission on May 6 of this year. [Photos: Declassified U.S. Spy Satellites]

The resulting fireball from parts of the Cosmos 2495 spysat's re-entry was not only spotted by skywatchers. It was also caught that night by a number of all-sky cameras, including the Cloudbait Observatory  here in the central Colorado Rocky Mountains.

An on-line buzz about the occurrence found a home at SeeSat-L, the mailing list for visual satellite observers, which has become an invaluable tool to study all manner of spacecraft events. So here's what happened with Cosmos 2495.

Satellite tracker Thomas Ashcraft, of Heliotown in Santa Fe, New Mexico, captured this long-exposure view of the brilliant fireball created by debris from a suspected Russian spy satellite on Sept. 2, 2014. 

Credit: Thomas Ashcraft/Heliotown

Graphic shows the actual time and track of the suspected piece of Russian Cosmos 2495 debris in relation to sightings.

Credit: Ted Molczan

Russian spysat falls from space

This multipart Cosmos 2495 consists of an equipment module, an instrument module, a camera re-entry vehicle and a large sun shade with additional antennae and sensors.

It is designed to re-enter Earth's atmosphere so that its camera canister can be retrieved by a recovery crew.

At the end of its mission on Sept. 2, the Russian spysat fired its engine to begin its return to Earth. Its fiery re-entry was witnessed and videoed from a large part of western Kazakhstan.

The module carrying the cargo of exposed film and a reusable camera separated, and is believed to have landed near the city of Orenburg in Russia. The remainder of the spacecraft, meanwhile, burned up as planned.

Now, it appears that the slow-moving fireball spotted over the U.S. on Sept. 2 — some 10 hours after Cosmos 2495's intelligence camera module had safely touched down — was due to a lingering leftover from the Soviet military spacecraft.

ESA Rosetta GAIDA: Tracking Comet 67/P Dust grains

During the Rosetta special session at EPSC, the GIADA team reported the detection of 27 dust grains associated with Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko during the month of August.

Four of the grains were detected as Rosetta was approaching the comet, nine during the first series of pyramid trajectories at a distance of about 90 km from the comet surface, and the other fourteen along the second series of pyramid trajectories at 60 km distance.

Positions along the Rosetta flight path of 27 dust grains (red dots) detected by GIADA in August 2014. 

Five grains (yellow dots) were detected by both the Grain Detection System and the Impact Sensor.

Image credit: ESA /Rosetta /GIADA /Univ Parthenope NA /INAF-OAC /IAA /INAF-IAPS

Representation of GIADA collecting comet dust.

The inset shows an image taken with a stereo microscope of an analogue dust grain used in the laboratory for GIADA calibration activities. 

The image was prepared with GIADA consortium material by M. Ferrari and V. Galluzzi. 

Image credit: ESA /Rosetta /GIADA /Univ Parthenope NA /INAF-OAC /IAA /INAF-IAPS

Of the 27 grains, five were seen by the Grain Detection System, which detects the grains and measures some of their optical properties, and also by the Impact Sensor, which measures their momentum.

Thus for this handful of grains, the team were able to measure their masses and velocities.

Such measurements are particularly important, as they will allow the scientists to trace the paths of grains back to the comet and to even identify which regions on the comet they may have been ejected from.

For these first five grains, that analysis is on-going.

The graph at the top of the article, shows the positions along the ESA Rosetta flight path of 27 dust grains (red dots) detected by GIADA in August 2014.

Five grains (yellow dots) were detected by both the Grain Detection System and the Impact Sensor.

Some of the data points overlap or are hidden behind the yellow symbols.

NASA Cassini Tracks Clouds Developing Over a Titan Sea

This animated sequence of Cassini images shows methane clouds moving above the large methane sea on Saturn's moon Titan known as Ligeia Mare.

Image Credit: NASA /JPL-Caltech /Space Science Institute

As NASA's Cassini spacecraft sped away from Titan following a relatively close flyby, its cameras monitored the moon's northern polar region, capturing signs of renewed cloud activity.

Image Credit: NASA /JPL-Caltech /Space Science Institute

NASA's Cassini spacecraft recently captured images of clouds moving across the northern hydrocarbon seas of Saturn's moon Titan.

This renewed weather activity, considered overdue by researchers, could finally signal the onset of summer storms that atmospheric models have long predicted.

The Cassini spacecraft obtained the new views in late July, as it receded from Titan after a close flyby. Cassini tracked the system of clouds developing and dissipating over the large methane sea known as Ligeia Mare for more than two days.

Measurements of cloud motions indicate wind speeds of around 7 to 10 mph (3 to 4.5 meters per second).

For several years after Cassini's 2004 arrival in the Saturn system, scientists frequently observed cloud activity near Titan's south pole, which was experiencing late summer at the time.

Clouds continued to be observed as spring came to Titan's northern hemisphere. But since a huge storm swept across the icy moon's low latitudes in late 2010, only a few small clouds have been observed anywhere on the icy moon.

The lack of cloud activity has surprised researchers, as computer simulations of Titan's atmospheric circulation predicted that clouds would increase in the north as summer approached, bringing increasingly warm temperatures to the atmosphere there.

"We're eager to find out if the clouds' appearance signals the beginning of summer weather patterns, or if it is an isolated occurrence," said Elizabeth Turtle, a Cassini imaging team associate at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Maryland.

"Also, how are the clouds related to the seas? Did Cassini just happen catch them over the seas, or do they form there preferentially?"

A year on Titan lasts about 30 Earth years, with each season lasting about seven years. Observing seasonal changes on Titan will continue to be a major goal for the Cassini mission as summer comes to Titan's north and the southern latitudes fall into winter darkness.

NASA OCO-2 satellite to track carbon pollution - launch delayed

The United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket with the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite onboard, is seen moments after the launch gantry was moved at the Space Launch Complex 2, Monday, June 30, 2014, Vandenberg Air Force Base, California

A water flow problem on Tuesday forced the US space agency to postpone the launch of a satellite to track atmospheric carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 was due to take off atop a Delta 2 rocket at 2:56 am Pacific time (0956 GMT) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California but the operation was halted 46 seconds before scheduled liftoff time due to an issue with water flow to the rocket, NASA said.

The launch window on Tuesday was quite short, just 30 seconds.

The timing had to be precise so that the satellite could join the A-Train, a constellation of five other international Earth-observing satellites.

More details on the nature of the problem and a time for the next launch attempt were expected later Tuesday, NASA commentator George Diller said.

NASA's previous attempts to launch carbon satellites failed in 2009 and 2011.

BOSS quasars track the expanding universe with precision

An artist's conception of how BOSS uses quasars to measure the distant universe. 

Light from distant quasars is partly absorbed by intervening gas, which is imprinted with a subtle ring-like pattern of known physical scale. 

Astronomers have now measured this scale with an accuracy of two percent, precisely measuring how fast the universe was expanding when it was just 3 billion years old. 

Credit: Zosia Rostomian, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Andreu Font-Ribera, BOSS Lyman-alpha team, Berkeley Lab.

The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), the largest component of the third Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III), pioneered the use of quasars to map density variations in intergalactic gas at high redshifts, tracing the structure of the young universe.

BOSS charts the history of the universe's expansion in order to illuminate the nature of dark energy, and new measures of large-scale structure have yielded the most precise measurement of expansion since galaxies first formed.

The latest quasar results combine two separate analytical techniques. A new kind of analysis, led by physicist Andreu Font-Ribera of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and his team, was published late last year.

Analysis using a tested approach, but with far more data than before, has just been published by Timothée Delubac, of EPFL Switzerland and France's Centre de Saclay, and his team.

The two analyses together establish the expansion rate at 68 kilometers per second per million light years at redshift 2.34, with an unprecedented accuracy of 2.2 percent.

"This means if we look back to the universe when it was less than a quarter of its present age, we'd see that a pair of galaxies separated by a million light years would be drifting apart at a velocity of 68 kilometers a second as the universe expands," says Font-Ribera, a postdoctoral fellow in Berkeley Lab's Physics Division.

"The uncertainty is plus or minus only a kilometer and a half per second." Font-Ribera presented the findings at the April 2014 meeting of the American Physical Society in Savannah, GA.

BOSS employs both galaxies and distant quasars to measure baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO), a signature imprint in the way matter is distributed, resulting from conditions in the early universe.

While also present in the distribution of invisible dark matter, the imprint is evident in the distribution of ordinary matter, including galaxies, quasars, and intergalactic hydrogen.

"Three years ago BOSS used 14,000 quasars to demonstrate we could make the biggest 3-D maps of the universe," says Berkeley Lab's David Schlegel, principal investigator of BOSS.

"Two years ago, with 48,000 quasars, we first detected baryon acoustic oscillations in these maps. Now, with more than 150,000 quasars, we've made extremely precise measures of BAO."

The BAO imprint corresponds to an excess of about five percent in the clustering of matter at a separation known as the BAO scale.

Recent experiments including BOSS and ESA's Planck satellite study of the cosmic microwave background put the BAO scale, as measured in today's universe, at very close to 450 million light years, a "standard ruler" for measuring expansion.

BAO directly descends from pressure waves (sound waves) moving through the early universe, when particles of light and matter were inextricably entangled; 380,000 years after the big bang, the universe had cooled enough for light to go free.

The cosmic microwave background radiation preserves a record of the early acoustic density peaks; these were the seeds of the subsequent BAO imprint on the distribution of matter.

More information: "Quasar-Lyman α Forest Cross-Correlation from BOSS DR11: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations," by Andreu Font-Ribera, et al., has been submitted to the Journal of Cosmology and Astropartical Physics and is now available online at arxiv.org/abs/1311.1767.

NASA Landsat-8: Tracking urban change and flood risk

This is an artist's rendition of the Landsat 8 satellite. 

Credit: NASA /USGS

When it comes to helping communities across the United States stay up-to-date on their flood risk, the Landsat satellite can take a bow.

Landsat 8 satellite images help track urban change, a factor that can impact a community's flood risk.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), uses these images to help identify where they should launch a new flood study.

Flood studies determine how prone different neighborhoods are to floods of a certain intensity or likelihood.

Successful flood studies require an arsenal of tools, however, including data on river flows and storm tides, hydrological and hydraulic analysis of landscape and river systems, and historic rain data, to name a few.

These studies have adding satellite data from Landsat 8 satellite to the toolkit. With its archive of images capturing sprawling cities and new developments, Landsat helps FEMA track how building and construction is impacting an area's landscape.

Earth-observing Landsat 8 satellites have been capturing images of the planet's surface since 1972.

Landsat 8, the newest satellite in the joint NASA and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) program, was launched Feb. 11, 2013, and now collects more than 400 images per day.

New and archived Landsat data are available free to the public from USGS. Researchers put the free data to a multitude of uses.

"If you identify areas where urban change is accelerating, there are consequences," said Zack Roehr, a senior spatial analyst with Dewberry, Fairfax, Va., a FEMA subcontractor.

Urbanization can spell trouble for flood risk. Soil typically acts like a sponge, absorbing water from rainfall.

When soil is covered with concrete or other impermeable material, water has nowhere to flow except towards storms and rivers, thereby increasing flood risk.

"The ground is no longer able to hold water, which means local flooding sources are going to receive more of that water," Roehr said. "The flooding characteristics are going to change."

NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN): Goldstone's Antenna Tracks Spacecraft

Late night in the desert: Goldstone's 230-foot (70-meter) antenna tracks spacecraft day and night. 

This photograph was taken on Jan. 11, 2012.

The Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, located in the Mojave Desert in California, is one of three complexes that comprise NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN).

The DSN provides radio communications for all of NASA's interplanetary spacecraft and is also utilized for radio astronomy and radar observations of the solar system and the universe. 

DSN, the world's largest and most powerful communications system for "talking to" spacecraft, will reach a milestone on Dec. 24: the 50th anniversary of its official creation.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Deep Space Network for NASA. 

More information about the Deep Space Network is online at: www.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn50.

More information about NASA's Space Communications and Navigation program is at: www.spacecomm.nasa.gov.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA TDRS-K Spacecraft Ready for Launch

NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, TDRS-K, enclosed in its payload fairing, passes through the Launch Complex 39 area at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Jan. 20, 2013 as it travels from the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Fla., to its launch site.

TDRS-K will lift off atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Space Launch Complex 41 on Jan. 30, 2013.

The TDRS-K spacecraft is part of the next-generation series in the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System, a constellation of space-based communication satellites providing tracking, telemetry, command and high-bandwidth data return services.

Image Credit: NASA/Glenn Benson

NASA Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System: TDRS-K Video

As a vital information pipeline for space-based research and exploration ambitions, the TDRS constellation fulfills NASA's broadest communication demands.

Now into it's fourth operational decade, the TDRS legacy continues to be communications excellence.

The addition of the third generation of spacecraft will replenish the constellation and ensure that the critical lifeline of space-to-ground communication support will be available for many years to come.

This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: NASA TDRS-K Video

USAF Cape Canaveral: First Stage of Atlas V rocket

At Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Space Launch Complex 41 in Florida, preparations are underway to erect the first stage of the Atlas V rocket that will carry the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, TDRS-K, into orbit.

TDRS-K is the first of three next-generation communications satellites designed to ensure vital operational continuity for NASA.

The seven TDRS spacecraft currently in orbit provide tracking, telemetry, command and high-bandwidth data return services for numerous science and human exploration missions orbiting Earth.

These include NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station. TDRS-K has a high-performance solar panel designed for more spacecraft power to meet growing S-band communications requirements.

Image Credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky

NASA Tracking Space Debris inside International Space Station Safety Zone

Sunlight glints off the International Space Station with the blue limb of Earth providing a dramatic backdrop in this photo taken by an astronaut on the shuttle Endeavour just before it docked after midnight on Feb. 10, 2010 during the STS-130 mission.

CREDIT: NASA

NASA is keeping a close eye on two pieces of space junk expected to whiz by the International Space Station in back-to-back passes, and the station may even have to dodge the orbital debris.

The drifting space flotsam includes the remains of a Russian Cosmos satellite and a leftover chunk of an old Indian rocket.

The Russian satellite debris will creep close to the space station on Thursday morning (Sept. 27), with the Indian rocket remnant zooming by on Friday, NASA officials reported.

As a precaution, NASA and its Russian partners began planning for a possible "debris avoidance maneuver" on Thursday morning that would steer the station clear of both pieces of space debris.

The maneuver, if ultimately required, would fire the thrusters on a European cargo ship currently docked at the station for just over two minutes to move the station clear of the space junk.

NASA and its partners traditionally order a debris avoidance maneuver when a piece of space junk is expected to pass so close that it enters a safety perimeter shaped like a pizza box that extends just over 15 miles (25 kilometers) around the space station, and a half-mile (0.75 km) above and below the orbiting lab.

NASA spokesman Rob Navias of the Johnson Space Center, home to the agency's space station Mission Control center, reported the two space debris fragments being tracked now will come just inside that safety zone.

Navias said the avoidance maneuver would be performed at 8:12 a.m. EDT (1218 GMT) on Thursday, if ultimately required.

It is possible that additional tracking of the space junk may allow station flight controllers to call off the maneuver, he added.

The Russian satellite debris will make its closest approach to the space station on Thursday at 10:42 a.m. EDT (1432 GMT), with the Indian rocket debris passing by on Friday at 1:47 a.m. EDT (0547 GMT), he added.

At no time will the station's three-person Expedition 33 crew be in danger, NASA officials said. The station is currently home to NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, Japanese astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko.

NASA ACE is tracking electron beams (Strahls) from the Sun

NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) observes a wide array of particles that flow toward Earth from the sun to better understand the great space weather system that connects the sun to our planet. 

Credit: NASA/H. Zell

In the quest to understand how the world's weather moves around the globe, scientists have had to tease apart different kinds of atmospheric movement, such as the great jet streams that can move across a whole hemisphere versus more intricate, localized flows.

Much the same must currently be done to understand the various motions at work in the great space weather system that links the sun and Earth as the sun shoots material out in all directions, creating its own version of a particle sea to fill up the solar system.

"People think of the sun as giving out light and heat," says Ruth Skoug, a space scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in N.M. "But it is also always losing particles, losing mass."

For example, the sun sends out a steady outflow of solar particles called the solar wind and additionally giant, sudden explosions of material called coronal mass ejections or CMEs erupt out into space.

Skoug studies a third kind of particle flow: jets of high-energy electrons streaming from the sun known as electron strahl.

Through a new five-year study of observations of the strahl, Skoug and her colleagues have researched another piece of this giant space weather puzzle around Earth.

Skoug says that each fast-moving electron is by and large constrained to move along magnetic field lines that flow out from the sun, some of which loop back to touch the sun again, others which extend out to the edges of the solar system.

The charge on an electron interacts with the field lines such that each particle sticks close to the line, somewhat like a bead on an abacus – with the added motion that the electron gyrates in circles around the field lines at the same time.

In general, the magnetic fields get weaker further away from the sun. A physical law that applies in those cases in which electrons are not pushed off course, or "scattered," demands that the electron gyrations get smaller and more stretched out along the field line.

If this were the only physics at work, therefore, one would expect the strahl to become a more and more focused, pencil-thin beam when measured near Earth.

This measurement is done by NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) mission, but it shows that the expected focusing doesn't quite happen.

"Wherever we look, the electron strahl is much wider than we would have expected," says Eric Christian, the NASA's deputy project scientist for ACE at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

"So there must be some process that helps scatter the electrons into a wider beam."

Indeed, the strahls come in a wide variety of sizes, so Skoug and her colleagues sifted through five years worth of ACE data to see if they could find any patterns.

While they spotted strahls of all widths, they did find that certain sizes showed up more frequently.

They also found that strahls along open field lines, those that do not return to the sun, have different characteristics than those on closed field lines, those that do return to the sun.

On the open field lines, the most common width by far is about ten times the size of the thin beam of electrons expected if there had been no extra scattering.

The closed field lines, however, showed a nearly equal number of strahls at that width and at a width some four times even larger.

SPIONs Track Functioning of Stem Cells Inside Body

UK's Liverpool Scientists have developed a method to track the stem cells in our body, according to a new report.

Scientists from the University of Liverpool have developed new methods to track stem cells and the changes that happen to them after they have been in the body for a significant period of time.

Scientists "labeled" the cells with superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) before they were administered to the patients.

The magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans clearly showed movement of the stem cells and the scientists could determine whether the stem cells reached their intended target or not.

However, scientists warn that conditions within the body's cells can lead to the degradation of SPIONs and reduce the ability of MRI scans to pick up on their signal in the long-term.

To overcome this drawback, scientists are developing new methods to visualise SPION's in the cells before they enter the body to learn their performance in the long-term.

Photothermal technique, a unique optical imaging system is used to improve SPION labelling so that particles survive for longer and have minimal impact on the function of the transplanted cells.

"In order to fully explore this potential, however, more technological developments are needed to understand how stem cells behave in the body after transplantation.

If we can't monitor stem cells effectively, it can have serious implications for patient health. Studies have already shown that if cells migrate to the circulatory system, beyond their target organ or tissue site, then it can cause inflammation in the body," said Dr Lara Bogart, scientist at the University's Institute of Integrative Biology in a statement.

"Labelling stem cells is hugely valuable to tracking their movements in the body, but we need to know more about how the particles used interact with stem cells.

Using new imaging systems we can work out their precise location in the cell and how they behave over time.

We hope to use this information to improve understanding of the MRI signal that tracks SPIONs once stem cells have been transplanted," she added.

Stem cells are used to treat conditions such as leukaemia and have the potential to treat many more diseases and disorders where patient survival is reliant on organ and tissue donation.