IRELAND
discovery_ireland_fff
discovery_ireland_fff
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
Storms on our<br />
sun, new sun<br />
formation -<br />
so what?<br />
For anyone working with even a passing interest in solar astronomy,<br />
the so-called Carrington event constitutes a defining moment. It<br />
occurred on the afternoon of 1st September 1859, when amateur<br />
British astronomer Richard Carrington pointed the brass telescope<br />
in his private observatory outside London skywards. What he saw<br />
when he trained his attention on the sun surprised him and he began<br />
to sketch a cluster of large spots which appeared to pock-mark its<br />
surface. As Carrington was doing this, to his astonishment, ‘two<br />
patches of intensely bright and white light erupted’ in a brilliant, if<br />
short-lived, display. Within minutes, these fireballs had faded, but<br />
over the hours that followed a series of peculiar phenomena were<br />
observed in various parts of the world: telegraphic services were<br />
interrupted, paper spontaneously caught fire and night-time skies<br />
were illuminated – as if it were daylight – by colourful auroras.<br />
discovery Ireland 36,37<br />
An ultraviolet image of the solar atmosphere. The bright areas are known as 'active regions' and are<br />
composed of twisted and stressed magnetic fields that can produce violent releases of energy. This<br />
energy release can heat the solar atmosphere up to temperatures of well over 10 million degrees<br />
celsius. The heating and energy release is known as a 'solar flare' (Solar Dynamic Observatory)<br />
What Carrington had observed was a ‘solar storm’, explains Dr. Eoin<br />
Carley, a Trinity College Dublin (TCD) solar physicist who is currently<br />
an Irish Research Council Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow based at<br />
the prestigious Paris Observatory. These solar storms arise, he says,<br />
because the sun, as well as radiating light and heat, has also been<br />
found to discharge huge eruptions of hot gas, which can hurtle<br />
billions of tons of matter in the direction of the earth. In the 156<br />
years since the Carrington event, these solar storms have been<br />
keenly observed, as have their effects, in the form of radio-wave<br />
disruptions, on the earth. Until relatively recently, however, what<br />
eluded scientists was a fundamental understanding of how these<br />
explosions on the sun were created.
Change language