Free Astronomy Lecture: Storms from the Sun | SF

Submitted by the Event Organizer

CANCELED: Free Astronomy Lecture | Castro

Once monthly, the SFAA hosts distinguished guest speakers who are leaders in the fields of astronomy, physics and related disciplines and they present to SFAA Members the latest developments from cutting-edge scientific programs.

Held in the Randall Museum Theater on the third Wednesday of every month, come early for coffee and a light snack at 7:30 PM followed by the general meeting at 7:45 PM. The lecture begins at 8:00 PM.

– Updated 6/26/19 – Event info last checked via website

Wednesday, October 15, 2014
CANCELED: Free Astronomy Lecture | Castro

Storms from the Sun by Karel Schrijver

The weather patterns of the Sun are powerful, ever changing, and mesmerizingly beautiful. They drive explosions of literally astronomical proportions that can escape the Sun’s gravity to affect all of the planets from nearby Mercury to distant Uranus, including Earth. Space storms involve a force that we generally ignore in our daily lives: magnetism. This force can heat gases to millions of degrees, can speed up atoms to be as dangerous as radioactivity, and can force electromagnetic storms into the the electrical power grid. But although the terminology may be unfamiliar, space weather follows the laws of physics: storm paths can be forecast and storms lead to predictable consequences around Earth. We are rapidly increasing our understanding of how solar storms become space weather, but the Sun is a big object and the space between it and Earth is vast. We combine the sparse observational coverage of all that space with computer models to help us view the activity of the Sun-Earth system. Thus, we increasingly grasp how three apparently distinct types of space weather originate from explosive lightning storms on the star next door that affect satellites, radio signals, and high-voltage power lines.

Karel Schrijver is a senior fellow at the Lockheed Martin STAR Labs in Palo Alto, California. He received his doctorate in 1986 at the University of Utrecht on the topic of solar and stellar magnetic activity. His current research focuses on the magnetic activity of the Sun, the coupling of the Sun’s magnetic field into the heliosphere, the manifestations of magnetic activity of other Sun-like stars, and the impact of solar variability on society. In addition to scientific research, he is actively involved in developing and operating space instrumentation: he was the science lead and later the Principal Investigator for the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) and for the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), and co-investigator on the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) on SDO and on the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) Small Explorer project.

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