What's New

The figure shows a sequence of three 19.5 nm difference images obtained by the EUVI instrument on STEREO taken on May 19, 2007. The images show a tsunami blasting through the Sun's atmosphere at millions of kilometers per hour.

At the largest scale, the Sun's corona (outermost atmosphere) consists of so-called streamers: huge, pointy cones of enhanced density. On a more basic level, everything in the corona is made up of overlapping loops, sometimes with their tops blown indefinitely upward.

Featuring amongs the installations, is the Heliosphere an installation by TCD astrophysics lecturer Dr Peter Gallagher and Anna Hill, which allows you see 3D close-up satellite footage of the surface of the sun taken by NASA and European Space Agency spacecraft. There is is also an opportunity to try out some interactive clothing that will allow you to "feel" solar flares.
View the movie on youtube about this exhibit. STEREO is not mentioned until the end.

U physicists discover powerful radio waves that may lead to spacecraft damage. The culprit? The most powerful radio waves of their kind ever detected in the Belts. The researchers not only discovered the waves but showed that they are capable of accelerating electrons to near the speed of light--which gives the electrons enough energy to knock out computers, pierce spacesuits, and damage the tissues of astronauts--and that they can do it astonishingly fast.

The two STEREO spacecraft have been slowly separating over most of the mission, so that now they are 44 degrees apart as of Jan. 8, 2008. They will continue to separate as the mission proceeds. So, what does this gain us? Well, for a time we could generate real 3D images and movies of the Sun for the first time. But there is another major advantage to the widening angle.

Astronomers got a new perspective on the sun in April, when NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) probes began sending back the first three-dimensional images of our nearest star. NASA built the twin spacecraft to learn more about coronal mass ejections, or CMEs—billion-ton spitballs of electrically charged particles that sporadically fire off from the sun. When CMEs slam into Earth, their electric fields can blow out the circuits of communications satellites or overload regional power grids. "Anything that's electromagnetic can be affected by their charged particles," says NASA astrophysicist Madhulika Guhathakurta, a program scientist for STEREO.

STEREO's Heliospheric Imagers are ideally placed for observing stellar variability. The nature of the synoptic observations means that stars can be tracked continuously through the 2 cameras on both spacecraft for up to 180 days. In some cases, it has taken ground based astronomers years to accumulate enough data to study a star's variability.

Data from STEREO's SECCHI Heliospheric Imagers have been used to image gusts in the solar wind as they go by the Earth

We've been getting a lot of questions lately asking what this small round object was that passed through the COR2-Ahead field of view from December 22nd to January 2nd. Hence, we decided to post this to answer everybody's questions. It's the planet Mercury.

Questions with Answers from STEREO Team Members

This TV show, which prominently features STEREO will be premiering on the National Geographic Channel Oct. 30 at 9:00 ET: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/ET/daily/20071030.html
It will replay a number of times after that.

NASA's STEREO satellite captured the first images ever of a collision between a solar "hurricane", called a coronal mass ejection (CME), and a comet. The collision caused the complete detachment of the comet’s plasma tail. Comets are icy leftovers from the solar system's formation billions of years ago. They usually hang out in the cold, distant regions of the solar system, but occasionally a gravitational tug from a planet, another comet, or even a nearby star sends them into the inner solar system. Once there, the sun's heat and radiation vaporizes gas and dust from the comet, forming its tail. Comets typically have two tails, one made of dust and a fainter one made of electrically conducting gas, called plasma.

On March 29, 2006, a NASA-led science expedition, including a number of STEREO team members, traveled to Tripoli and then the Sahara desert to witness and study -- first hand -- a total solar eclipse. This international expedition was an unprecedented collaboration with Libyan scientists and researchers from across the globe. NASA produced a high definition video documentary of the expedition and its interactions with Libya academics and government officials.

NASA's STEREO Mission, the scientists involved and the vital information that they gather and study, is being presented in a new digital 3D film titled "3D Sun." 3D Sun will bring these images to the world in a way that has only been imagined before. 3D Sun opened at the Boston Museum of Science the first week of September.

The STEREO spacecraft shows average activity on the sun. A close-up view of the top of the sun seen in profile shows thousands of little spurts, like small blow torches, shooting out all over the sun.

We invite you to send us your 3D photos so that we can feature them on our web site. The 3D effect is fun to see and we want to show off what our readers have come up with. The photos need to be in the red/cyan anaglyph mode so that all viewers can see them with standard 3D glasses. (We are willing to show Left/Right pairs (in addition to the anaglyphs).

Though we can't yet predict such storms, it's only a matter of time. Space-weather forecasters use satellites and ground-based scopes to monitor sunspots for flares and CMEs but can't tell with certainty if or when they will hit Earth. The STEREO satellites will help scientists determine whether a particular storm is headed for us and, hopefully, will give satellite and energy-grid minders enough warning to prepare for a hit.

The STEREO 3D Press Conference has received a large amount of media attention. Click here to view all the press clippings.

The two STEREO spacecraft were launched together in Oct. 2006 from Cape Canaveral. In the following months they were placed in two separate orbits about the Sun - one (the Ahead spacecraft) moving ahead of Earth's orbit, the other (Behind) moving behind Earth's orbit. Both spacecraft are separating from each other and Earth. The spacecraft now have four degrees of separation, enough to provide true 3D images of the Sun and solar storms for the very first time.

On April 23, NASA will unveil 3-D images of the sun from NASA's Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) on the web, television and museums across the country. For first time, scientists will be able to see structures in the Sun's atmosphere in three dimensions.

NASA researchers will be discussing the remarkable imagery from the recently launched STEREO spacecraft. For the first time, scientists are now able to track solar storms from the sun to Earth using the latest images from NASA's twin STEREO spacecraft. Images supporting the telecon will be available at this site on Thursday morning.

On Feb. 25, 2007 there was a transit of the Moon across the face of the Sun - but it could not be seen from Earth. This sight was visible only from the STEREO-B spacecraft in its orbit about the sun, trailing behind the Earth.

Jan. 22, 2007 The "Behind" spacecraft leaves Earth orbit for its orbit about the sun. Now both spacecraft are in thier final sun-centric orbits.

An instrument on one of the two new STEREO spacecraft captured an unprecedented view of the brightest comet of the last 40 years.

NASA's twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatories (STEREO) sent back their first images of the sun this week and with them a view into the sun's mounting activity.

View the STEREO first light images.

It is not possible for the human eye to see ultraviolet light directly. Thus, the colors of these images are just ways to represent them so we can see them. To keep the images straight, we assign certain colors to EUVI images taken in particular extreme ultraviolet (EUV) wavelengths, so usually the 195 Å images are in green, the 304 Å images are in orange, etc.

A Coronagraph is an instrument which studies the Sun's outer atmosphere, the corona. From Earth the corona is most easily seen during a total solar eclipse.

The twin STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) spacecraft were launched Wednesday, October 25th, at 8:52 p.m. EDT on a Delta II 7925-10L rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.