BARREL (Balloon Array for Radiation belt Relativistic Electron Losses) is a multiple-balloon investigation that will study Earth's Radiation Belts. Atmospheric losses of relativistic electrons play an important role in radiation belt dynamics; precipitation into the atmosphere may even completely deplete the radiation belts in some cases. BARREL is the first NASA Living with a Star Geospace Mission of Opportunity, and will support NASA's RBSP (Radiation Belt Storm Probes) mission.
Just a friendly reminder that we are having our bi-weekly science telecon today at 3:00. It should be a great one! Larua Blum with REPTILE is going to talk about some conjunctions we saw with them. Also, not much time before the BARREL/Van Allen Workshop. Make sure to book your tickets to the midwest.
In case you haven't heard and would like to attend, we are having our BARREL/Van Allen Science working group workshop June 4 - 6th in Minneapolis MN. It should be a blast. We will be focusing on three days Jan 17th, Jan 26th, and Feb. 2nd. There were quiet a few good events and interesting times to look at so it should be an exciting conversation!
This Monday's telecon will again have a science talk as well as a discussion about the format of the workshop. Please feel free to join us!
The NASA satellite Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) has put together a great movie showing the dynamics on the sun over a three year period - in three minutes.
There is an article at NPR accompanying this movie. I found a lot of the comments interesting. A common question that can up was does the sun spin or is the spinning due to the Earth? Yes, the Sun spins around it's own axis and is made up of hot ionised gas which we call plasma. Plasma acts kind of like a liquid, so different parts of the sun will rotate at different rates. Near the Sun's equator it rotates once ever 25 days or so while at the Sun's poles it's closer to 30 days. This is pretty impressive if you consider that it takes the Earth ~1/27 = 0.037 of a Sun's rotation to rotate and the Sun is ~109 Earth's across!
Although the sunspots, flares, brightenings on the Sun all appear to be in two belts, They actually go through what we call the Butterfly pattern. At the beginning of a solar cycle (11 year period) These regions are found closer to the poles. As time goes on they move towards the equator. This solar cycle is where the Sun's magnetic field reverses, so the south pole becomes the north and the north pole becomes the south. Our magnetic field also does this, but on a much longer time scale.
The Sun is incredibly interesting and so important to life here on Earth. There are quiet a few great missions which focus on studying the Sun. If you want to check out more wonderful photos and videos search for SOHO and STEREO. STEREO is actually two satellites looking at the Sun in stereo allowing us to get some amazing 3-D images of the Sun! One of the Satellites is trailing us in our orbit while the other is running ahead of us. At the moment they are situated so that we can actually see what is going on behind the Sun as well for the first time!
As promised, here is Robyn's physics colloquium talk! It really was fun to see our entire campaign summarised with a great introduction. If you've ever wondered what it is we do exactly or what space physics even is, this has some great info at the beginning.
Topic: "Dynamics of Radiation Belt Electrons and the BARREL Experiment"
Abstract: The intensity of relativistic electrons in Earth's radiation belts is known to be highly variable, but the processes responsible for this variability are still not well understood. Observed rapid depletions and subsequent rebuilding of the trapped particle population imply an efficient energization process, in some cases accelerating electrons to multiple MeV energies on a timescale as short as minutes. NASA's two Van Allen Probes were launched in August 2012 to study the radiation belts. BARREL is a multiple-balloon investigation that works with the Van Allen Probes to study atmospheric loss of radiation belt electrons. The first BARREL balloon campaign was carried out in January-February 2013. Twenty small (~20 kg) balloon payloads were launched from the SANAE IV and Halley VI Antarctic research stations. A second campaign will be carried out next year. This talk will provide an introduction to radiation belt physics, and will summarize early results from BARREL and Van Allen.
I'll see if we can get the actual video to upload here, but in the mean time, just click on the link.
A New GOES Satellite is on it's way and not too soon either.
We use the GOES satellites and their data a lot! They provided some great data to help us forecast space weather during this last campaign. We were able to confirm that we saw an x-ray flare from the sun with our balloons due to GOES. We were able to see waves and their associated plasma parameters which may be the cause for some of our observed precipitation, and the list goes on. This is great news that we'll be getting a new GOES satellite in a few years!
Today Robyn gave the Physics Colloquium at Dartmouth College. Brett provided and set up all the show and tell portions of the talk. It made an impressive display. We had a buttoned up payload (the white box), the insides and just the frame along with the parachute and a ripped balloon from this last years campaign. Once the link to the video is up we'll make sure to let everyone know.
I thought it was cool how you could see the payload here and then in the photo, but that didn't turn out too well, so I tried again
Afterwards people came up and were able to feel just how thin and strong our balloons are. It's quiet amazing to think that they can go through these large temperature changes and carry our payloads all without breaking. The technology used is just so cool!
