A month
ago, my daffodils began blooming, and I knew that spring was coming. Next week,
it's official. On March 21 at 00 07 UT (universal time), the Earth spins
through the vernal equinox. It's that special moment in our annual trek around
the Sun that marks the beginning of spring. Seen from Earth, the Sun is
crossing the celestial equator headed north. Here in the US, it's still March
20 at that moment, and so we're celebrating the first day of spring on March
20, and you're invited to celebrate "Sun-Earth Day."
Each year,
NASA sponsors Sun-Earth Day events that highlight our local star. This year,
the theme is "Living in the Atmosphere of the Sun." We receive light and heat
from the Sun. Virtually all energy on Earth can be traced back to the Sun.
Nuclear power is the exception. Earth is a small planet, and is continually
bathed in a sea of particles carried by the solar wind. When these charged
particles spiral in at the poles, they electrify the sky with aurora. Larger
storms threaten our satellites and even our ground-based electrical
transmission systems. We live in the space weather that is governed by the Sun.
You can
learn more about the space weather and the Sun by joining a NASA webcast. On March 20 (1 PM EST) representatives from NASA missions
will share highlights from each of their missions and tell their interconnected
space weather story, how space weather data is collected, and how scientists
verify their results. They are:
...*
George Doshenk (HINODE (Solar-B))
* Barbara Thompson (Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO))
* Terry Kucera (STEREO)
* Laura Peticolas- (THEMIS)
* Sten Odenwald (IMAGE) What we've learned from past science missions
* Janet Luhmann- (UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory) Space Weather
* Peter Smith- (University of Arizona) Space Weather Impact on Mars
The
webcast links will be announced through NASA's Sun-Earth
Day events webpage.
The
Sun-Earth Day team offers several resources for different age groups and
interests. For the younger set, there are nice interactive online
books about the Sun and about Auroras in both English and Spanish. For teachers, there are complete
instructions for how to set up a Space
Weather Action Center to get students involved in observing our nearest
star. If you're a fan of podcasts,
there's a nice series of aural tidbits about the Sun to enliven the daily
commute. But, best of all are the images of the Sun. A Sun-Earth
Viewer provides current images of the Sun from several satellites and
ground-based observatories. The online tools allow you to zoom in on solar
features and see them in comparison to the size of our small planet Earth.
Check it out.
Personally,
I'm ready for spring, and one of my favorite tunes from the Beatles. In the
words of George Harrison, "Here comes the Sun....."
advertisement
