An Italian consortium to study the Space Weather. The paper: “SWELTO — Space WEather Laboratory in Turin Observatory” of A. Bemporad (INAF – AOTo) recently appeared on the INAF Technical Reports
The atmosphere of the Sun hosts a rich variety of magnetic phenomena, which are the consequence of the interaction between the solar magnetic field and the hot and highly ionized solar gas (plasma). The main magnetic phenomena occurring in the photosphere are the sunspots. They appear as dark spots in the bright solar surface, which correspond to regions with intense local magnetic field where the plasma is deeper and colder than the photosphere (about 4000 K vs. 5600 K). This is due to the suppression of the convection below the photosphere by the intense magnetic field in the spots. In the chromosphere, the main and more spectacular magnetic phenomena are the prominences, which are ejections of hot plasma several hundred thousands km long. The typical magnetic phenomena observed in the corona are instead flares, which are the consequence of the release of large amount of energy by the magnetic field in the corona. This energy heats up the underlying plasma which evaporates and fills the magnetic loops in the corona, where the plasma is heated up to million of degrees. These loops may break up sometime, leading to the release of hot plasma in the interplanetary space. These are the so-called “Coronal Mass Ejections”.
Together with the solar wind, these magnetic phenomena result in the ejection of solar plasma in the interplanetary space, which may even reach our planet. Earth is surrounded by a magnetic field which acts as a shield against these charged particles, which can interact and perturb the magnetic field (causing geomagnetic storms), and even trapped by the field. A spectacular phenomenon caused by the charged particles trapped by the Earth magnetic field are the aurorae. However, after intense magnetic phenomena occurring in the Sun, the geomagnetic storms can be so severe to cause less nice consequences, such as problems to the satellites and instruments in orbit, interference in the radio transmissions, or even damages to the electric lines. For instance, the Carrington event occurred in the 1859 caused the interruption of telegraphic lines in several nations.
Today, several missions are aimed at monitoring and observing the Solar magnetic activity, producing a huge amount of high-quality data. These observations led to the birth of a new branch of physics called “Space Weather”, which aims at studying and predicting the effects of solar magnetic activity on Earth. In the last years, the Italian astronomical community put a great effort in this field, being involved in the data analysis and in the development of both numerical models describing the Solar magnetic phenomena and instrumentations. In order to better coordinate these efforts, astronomers of the INAF – Astrophysical Observatory of Turin set the consortium SWELTO (Space WEather Laboratory in Turin Observatory), which aims at: 1) developing and testing the necessary tools to analyze the data acquired by observatories which monitor the Solar magnetic phenomena; 2) developing and testing detectors to observe these phenomena from the ground and space; 3) coordinating the research activity of the Italian community in this field; 4) promoting the outreach of the results. SWELTO has been recently described in the INAF Research Note “SWELTO — Space WEather Laboratory in Turin Observatory“, led by the astronomer A. Bemporad of INAF – Astrophysical Observatory of Turin. One of SWELTO collaborators is F. Reale, professor of the University of Palermo and astronomer of INAF – Astronomical Observatory of Palermo.
The figure (click here to visualize the entire image) shows the SWELTO logo.
Mario Giuseppe Guarcello ( follow mguarce) ( youtube)
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