March 1, 2007 — Twin satellites taking three-dimensional images of the sun have returned their first images, fulfilling scientists' hopes for a tool that could significantly improve forecasts of potentially dangerous space weather.
"Nobody ever died looking at an aurora, but some of the other disturbances are getting to be a problem," said project scientist Michael Kaiser with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Aurora, the shimmering lights that appear over Earth's polar regions, are benign manifestations of high-energy particles streaming off the sun's corona and hitting Earth's magnetic field.
When the eruptions are intense, the charged particles can wipe out computer memory, short circuit power grids and interfere with air-to-ground radio transmissions.
Before the two-part Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, or STEREO, was in orbit, scientists could make predictions about a solar storm's intensity and direction only about 12 hours before it hit Earth.
Now scientists expect to be able to trace a storm's progress from the moment it leaves the sun, said Naval Research Laboratory solar physicist Russell Howard, a STEREO principal investigator.
