Shining new light on Sun's mysteries
UCLan and NASA to share an avalanche of secrets
UCLan is to play a key role in an international team that will shine new light on the Sun’s mysteries like never before.
On 10 February 2010, NASA will launch a new solar observing satellite named the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) which will study the Sun’s magnetic field and corona, to find out what governs changes in the Sun’s activity and thus how that activity affects Planet Earth.
The images of the Sun captured by SDO will be equivalent to ten times the quality of high definition television.
The satellite’s telescopes will take 80 of these high quality images every minute, 24 hours a day, thus generating the equivalent of 1.5 terabytes of data daily.
SDO will be launched from Cape Canaveral on Wednesday, 10 February 2010 at 15:26 GMT.
UCLan is the only UK institution that will be collaborating closely with NASA and its international partners to investigate, store, manage and share these images with the European scientific and academic community. The tidal wave of information that will flow through UCLan is equivalent in size to downloading half a million iTunes songs a day.
Dr Robert Walsh, UCLan Project Leader and University Director of Research , said: “UCLan is the only university in the UK to be part of the data distribution for this major international project: this is a clear demonstration of the growing international reputation of our astrophysics institute.
"SDO will be beaming back to Earth 150 million bits of data per second, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It's a unique torrent of information, a large fraction of which will be managed by our team in Preston. We should start to receive the SDO‘s first images during the spring and their unparalleled clarity will help us to reveal and unravel the mysteries of the Sun.”
Dr Dean Pesnell, SDO Project Scientist at NASA, said: "The SDO project is an unprecedented opportunity to build a deeper understanding of the Sun and the impact of solar activity on the Solar System including Earth. SDO will reveal the underlying physics of solar variability. I am delighted to be working with Dr Walsh and his team at UCLan as part of an international collaboration to share the data from this unique mission with the scientific community in the UK and across Europe.”
During its five-year mission, SDO will study the causes of severe space weather, how solar activity evolves and the impact of these solar variations on space missions, aircraft, satellite communications, navigation system and even the supply of electrical power to our homes.
Further information on the launch and additional pictures are available at: http://www.star.uclan.ac.uk/news/20100209
09 February 2010
