2023-09-19 06:00:05
A solar flare so powerful that it acts like a cosmic vacuum cleaner, removing interplanetary dust in its path: that’s what NASA’s Parker probe observed, confirming a 20-year-old theory and opening new perspectives for forecast of the meteorology spatial. The Parker Solar Probe (PSP).
Credit: NASA GSFC/CIL/Brian Monroe
On September 5, 2022, NASA’s Parker probe experienced one of the most powerful coronal mass ejections (CMEs) on record. A CME is a massive eruption of plasma andenergy coming from the corona of the Sun. These phenomena can disrupt the satellitescommunications and even electrical networks on Earth.
Guillermo Stenborg, an astrophysicist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, said the observation confirms a theory proposed in 2003. According to this theory, CMEs can interact with interplanetary dust orbiting around our star and even take it with them. Interplanetary dust is made up of tiny particles from asteroids, comets and even planets.
The interaction between CME and dust was observed as a decrease in brightness in the images of the camera WISPR from the Parker probe. To locate this occurrence, the team had to calculate the brightness average WISPR images on several similar orbits.
Parker’s observations were essential to this discovery. According to the researchers, they could also provide information about related phenomena lower in the corona, such as coronal darkening caused by areas of low density that often appear after CME.
Guillermo Stenborg and his team think that dust suppression might only occur with the most powerful CMEs. Nonetheless, understanding the physics behind this interaction could have implications for space weather prediction.
The Parker Probe was developed as part of NASA’s Living With a Star program to explore aspects of the Sun-Earth system that directly affect life and society.
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