Solar Storms & Smoke: Dryden Augments ISS Communications
Story by Gray Creech
Public Affairs, NASA Dryden Flight Research Center
As smoke from the Simi Valley-area wildfires reached Edwards AFB and Dryden, another activity a bit further away was shining through.
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| Dryden's Mike Yettaw of the WATR Communications Facility took this photograph of the Sun just after sunrise on the morning of Oct. 29, 2003, through a pair of binoculars. Several sunspots are visible. Yettaw used a Canon Powershot S-20 3.3 megapixel digital camera. The image was made through a thick pall of smoke over Dryden at the time. |
Taking an opportunity provided by the unrelated smoke, Dryden's Mike Yettaw of the Western Aeronautical Test Range (WATR) Communications Facility took a photograph of the sun just after sunrise on the morning of Oct. 29, 2003, without camera filters but through a pair of binoculars. Several sunspots from a raging solar storm are visible in the image.
Smoke from the fires occasionally acts to diffuse sunlight, allowing views of the sun that aren't customary. Sometimes, the filtering is great enough
to allow larger sunspots to be seen.
According to Dryden's Dr. Greg Bendrick, one should still use caution when attempting to view the sun, even when it is easily seen through thick smoke.
"Our eyes focus light on a very small area of the retina, and even though visible light may be
obscured, there's still a lot of UV radiation that can cause permanent damage to the eye," Bendrick said.
Yettaw's morning continued getting busier Oct. 29 as the WATR's communications facility was called up to augment International Space Station (ISS) communications due to increased solar flare activity at the time. The facility is a communications relay center for both the Shuttle and the ISS.
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| Image taken by the SOHO (SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory) orbiter on Oct. 28 shows the third largest solar flare ever recorded. The flare is the bright spot in the lower center of the image. (NASA photo). |
In the past couple of days a new solar storm with accompanying sunspots has appeared on the sun, generating large solar flares known as coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. On Oct. 28-29, 2003, the third largest CME ever recorded in the X-ray part of the spectrum sent super-velocity solar particles toward Earth. It headed for Earth at 1,250 miles per second, nearly five times faster than a normal CME.
NASA observers on the ground watch the solar activity, keeping the ISS crew informed on intensity levels. During peak exposure times, the new crew, NASA astronaut Mike Foale and Russian cosmonaut Alexander Kaleri, can move to the living quarters of the station, which provides the best radiation protection for them.
The current solar storm is topping-out at G5, the highest rating on the scale used by scientists to quantify solar activity. Large CMEs can disrupt satellite electronics, as well as radio and microwave frequency communications. Such activity can also affect our electrical power. In 1989, a large solar flare shut down Quebec's power grid.
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