A New Telescope Learns to Catch Solar Storms
The News
NASA's new PUNCH mission — four little spacecraft working together — just made its very first prediction of when a giant burst from the Sun would reach Earth, and it was ten times more accurate than the old way. Scientists could tell within half an hour when the storm would arrive!
Professor Pip stood on a grassy hilltop at golden hour, his fluffy tail swishing behind him. He adjusted his slightly crooked spectacles and patted the bulging pockets of his forest-green lab coat.
"Ah! There you are!" he called out, pulling from his pockets a small brass telescope, a yellow tennis ball, and — with a little "oof!" — a shiny green marble.
Mia, Leo, and Asha plopped down cross-legged in the grass. "Why the tennis ball, Professor?" asked Asha.
Pip held it high. "This," he announced, "is the Sun. And this—" he wiggled the marble, "—is a huge puff of stormy stuff the Sun sometimes sneezes out. Scientists call it a coronal mass ejection. That's a big name for a big burp of hot particles."
"A sun burp?!" Leo giggled.
"Precisely!" said Pip. "Now, watch." He rolled the marble slowly across the grass toward Mia's foot. "If I only see the marble at the very beginning, how do I know when it will reach you?"
"You have to guess!" said Mia.
"Exactly right. That's what scientists used to do. They only got a peek at the sun-burp near the Sun, then it disappeared into the dark. Now — oh my whiskers — a new NASA mission called PUNCH uses four little spacecraft that watch the burp the whole way, like this—" He rolled the marble again, but this time trotted alongside it, notebook out, scribbling. "Speed. Direction. Where it's headed. Every four minutes, a new picture!"
Asha's eyes went wide. "So they can tell when it will hit Earth?"
"Within thirty minutes!" Pip clapped his paws. "Which matters because a big solar storm can wobble our GPS, jiggle our radios, and paint the sky green and purple with auroras."
"Oh!" said Leo. "It's like when I roll a ball at Mom and she can duck sooner if she sees it coming!"
"Precisely, my clever friend." Pip looked up at the pink evening clouds. "The Sun is 93 million miles away, and yet we can now watch its weather like it's just over the hill."
He handed each child a marble. "Now — you be PUNCH. Roll it, follow it, and tell me exactly when it will reach the fence post."
Spark a Conversation
- Why is it useful to know when a solar storm will arrive at Earth?
- What do you think auroras (the northern lights) have to do with the Sun?
- If you had four cameras pointed at your bedroom door, what could you learn that one camera couldn't tell you?