ISOIS discovers energetic particles can provide advance warning of incoming coronal mass ejections (IMAGE)
Caption
The top panel shows a schematic of a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), during which a burst of mass as big as Lake Michigan is ejected from the sun. These can pose a hazard to astronauts and space satellites, but IS?IS scientists discovered that tiny energetic particles rush ahead of the ejected mass, providing advance warning of the incoming threat. The bottom panel shows proton fluxes detected by IS?IS's EPI-Lo (top) and the magnetic field measurements (bottom) around the time of an observed CME. The energetic particles reached Parker Solar Probe nearly a day before the ejected mass.
Credit
Image by Jamey Szalay and David McComas; Adapted with permission from N.J. Fox et al, Space Science Reviews 204: 7 (2016) and D.J. McComas et al., Nature 575:7785 (2019)
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