New findings from the Solar Orbiter mission have pinpointed the origin of the slow solar wind in regions where the Sun’s magnetic field lines reconnect, offering deeper insights into solar dynamics and potential impacts on Earth. Credit: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI Team; acknowledgment: Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research
Solar wind, which can travel at hundreds of kilometers per second, has fascinated scientists for years, and new research published today in the journalparticles from the Sun into space – with wind traveling at over 500 km per second known as ‘fast’ and under 500 km per second described as ‘slow’. Solar Orbiter’s suite of ten science instruments that will study the Sun. There are two types: in situ and remote sensing. The in situ instruments measure the conditions around the spacecraft itself. The remote-sensing instruments measure what is happening at large distances away. Together, both sets of data can be used to piece together a more complete picture of what is happening in the Sun’s corona and the solar wind. Credit: ESA-S.
Occasionally these closed magnetic loops will break, providing a brief opportunity for solar material to escape, in the same way it does through open magnetic field lines, before reconnecting and forming a closed loop once again. This generally takes place in areas where the open and closed corona meet.
“The changes in composition of the heavy ions along with the electrons provide strong evidence that not only is the variability driven by the different source regions, but it is also due to reconnection processes occurring between the closed and open loops in the corona.”The ESA Solar Orbiter mission is an international collaboration, with scientists and institutions from around the world working together, contributing specialist skills and equipment.
Among the instruments onboard Solar Orbiter is the Heavy Ion Sensor , developed in part by researchers and engineers from the University of Michigan’s Space Physics Research Laboratory in the department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering. The sensor was designed to measure heavy ions in the solar wind, which can be used to determine where the solar wind came from.