Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Hinode and SOHO Paint an Asymmetrical Picture of the Sun

Approximately every 11 years the magnetic field on the sun reverses completely -- the north magnetic pole switches to south, and vice versa. It's as if a bar magnet slowly lost its magnetic field and regained it in the opposite direction, so the positive side becomes the negative side. But, of course, the sun is not a simple bar magnet and the causes of the switch, not to mention the complex tracery of moving magnetic fields throughout the eleven-year cycle, are not easy to map out.
Continue Reading on ScienceDaily.com

Hinode: Mission to the Sun
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hinode/index.html

Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)
http://soho.esac.esa.int/home.html

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