Archiv: solares interplanetares Magnetfeld / Heliosphäre / solar interplanetary magnetic field / heliosphere / heliospheric current sheet


13.02.2026 - 07:08 [ National Aeronautics and Space Administration ]

NASA’s IMAP Begins Primary Science Mission

(February 2, 2026)

NASA’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) began its two-year primary science mission on Feb. 1 to explore and map the boundaries of our heliosphere — the protective bubble created by the solar wind that encapsulates our solar system.

The mission, which launched on Sept. 24, 2025, relies on 10 scientific instruments to chart a comprehensive picture of what’s roiling in space, from high-energy particles originating at the Sun, to magnetic fields in interplanetary space, to dust left from exploded stars in interstellar space.

13.02.2026 - 06:58 [ CBS News ]

NASA begins mission to map the boundaries of our heliosphere

(February 3, 2026)

A NASA probe has started its mission to map the heliosphere, which is a huge protective bubble around the solar system that was created by the sun, the space agency announced on Monday.

The space agency‘s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, or IMAP, is expected to continue its mission for two years, using scientific instruments to chart the boundaries of the heliosphere and what‘s going on inside of it.

The probe is focusing on high-energy particles bursting from the surface of the sun, the magnetic fields that form in the spaces between planets, and the dust left behind by collapsed stars farther out in the galaxy.

13.02.2026 - 06:36 [ Royal Astronomical Society - ras.ac.uk ]

Early riser! The Sun is already starting its next solar cycle

(July 19, 2024)

The current solar cycle, named Cycle 25 because it is the 25th since 1755 when extensive recording of solar sunspot activity began, started in 2019.

It is not expected to end for another six years but the first signs that the next solar cycle is beginning have been spotted by researchers from the University of Birmingham and presented at the Royal Astronomical Society‘s National Astronomy Meeting in Hull.

13.02.2026 - 06:26 [ OregonLive.com ]

Interactive: Why auroras are surging during one of the weakest solar cycles in 126 years

(February 12, 2026)

Scientists call the current cycle Solar Cycle 25, the 25th numbered cycle since recordkeeping began in the 1700s. Even though it may feel like the northern lights have been more common in recent years, Solar Cycle 25 ranks among the lowest of the past 126 years.

(…)

Earth’s magnetic field has been slowly weakening for more than a century, which means our natural shield isn’t quite as strong as it used to be. That doesn’t create solar storms, but it can change how much of that energy actually makes it through when a strong one hits.

13.02.2026 - 06:12 [ Cairo University / Researchgate.net ]

The Shrinking of the Heliosphere Due to Reduced Solar Wind

(December 2009)

Abstract. The heliosphere is the space within which the solar wind dominates and the solar interplanetary magnetic field prevails. Its boundary is determined by the balance between stellar and solar winds. Owing to the present reduction in the solar wind pressure, one would expect that the stellar wind would push the heliosphere inward leading to its shrinkage. In this paper we calculate the extent of the heliosphere at different solar wind status. Backward estimation of the extent of the heliosphere since 1890 is done. It is found that the heliosphere oscillated between 75 and 125 AU between 1890 – 2010. Most important is the forecast of the shrinkage and oscillations of the heliosphere and their implications on the earth. The shrinkage of the heliosphere would allow more invasions of cosmic rays to the earth and planets, increased cloud cover and a cooler Earth.

(…)

1.4 Prediction of the State of solar Activity During The Next Few Decades

Weak solar cycles occur at the bottom of Wolf-Gleissberg cycles. They tend to occur in series of 3-4 cycles. A single weak cycle also occurs in between the two maximums of Wolf-Gleissberg cycle. Since the last weak solar cycles occurred around 1900 while the previous ones occurred around 1800 then the newly started cycle 24 should be a weak solar cycle. However, owing to the 200-years de Verie cycle of the sun, it is more likely that the status of the coming solar activity would be something like those weak cycles around 1800 as shown in Fig 1. Svalgaard (2005) also predicted that cycle 24 would be the lowest so far in the past 100 years with the maximum sunspot number around 75.

13.02.2026 - 06:07 [ NationalGeographic.com ]

Surprise: Solar System „Force Field“ Shrinks Fast

(October 1, 2010)

For starters, it‘s been assumed that the heliosphere‘s expansion and contraction follows the sun‘s roughly 11-year activity cycle, during which the flow rate of charged particles, or solar wind, fluctuates.

But when scientists compared IBEX maps of the heliosphere taken just six months apart, the researchers found that it had shrunk to a much greater extent than expected.

13.02.2026 - 06:02 [ Telegraph.co.uk ]

Sun‘s protective ‚bubble‘ is shrinking

(October 18, 2008)

The scientists hope the IBEX mission will allow them to gain a better understanding of what happens at this boundary and help them predict what protection it will offer in the future.

Without the heliosphere the harmful intergalactic cosmic radiation would make life on Earth almost impossible by destroying DNA and making the climate uninhabitable.

Measurements made by the Ulysses deep space probe, which was launched in 1990 to orbit the sun, have shown that the pressure created inside the heliosphere by the solar wind has been decreasing.

13.02.2026 - 05:54 [ European Space Agency, ESA / Youtube ]

The Ulysses Legacy: Observing the Sun for 17 years

Sep 3, 2008
The ESA/NASA Ulysses mission has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the Sun and our local interstellar neighbourhood. Ulysses was designed to last for five years but the mission was extended four times, allowing Ulysses to pass over the Sun‘s poles for a second and third time, and spending more than 18 years in space.

13.02.2026 - 04:03 [ NASA / Youtube ]

Voyager 1 Trajectory through the Solar System

Aug 31, 2017

This visualization tracks the trajectory of the Voyager 1 spacecraft through the solar system. Launched on September 5, 1977, it was one of two spacecraft sent to visit the giant planets of the outer solar system. Voyager 1 flew by Jupiter and Saturn before being directed out of the solar system.

To fit the 40 year history of the mission into a short visualization, the pacing of time accelerates through most of the movie, starting at about 5 days per second at the beginning and speeding up to about 11 months per second after the planet flybys are past.

The termination shock and heliopause are the ‚boundaries‘ created when the plasma between the stars interacts with the plasma flowing outward from the Sun.

13.02.2026 - 03:57 [ National Aeronautics and Space Administration ]

Animation: Heliosphere

(March 9, 2022)

This complex environment surrounds the planets and ultimately has a crucial effect on the formation, evolution, and destiny of planetary systems. For one thing, our heliosphere acts as a giant shield, protecting the planets from galactic cosmic radiation. Earth is additionally shielded by its own magnetic field, the magnetosphere, which protects us not only from solar and cosmic particle radiation but also from erosion of the atmosphere by the solar wind. Planets without a shielding magnetic field, such as Mars and Venus, are exposed to such processes and have evolved differently.

NASA‘s studies of the heliosphere include research into: how the solar wind behaves near Earth; what causes and sustains magnetic and electric fields around other planets; how does the heliosphere interact with the interstellar medium; what do the boundaries of the heliosphere look like; what is the origin and evolution of the solar wind and the interstellar cosmic rays; and what contributes to the habitability of exoplanets.

13.02.2026 - 03:00 [ Springer.com ]

Energy coupling between the solar wind and the magnetosphere

(June 1981)

This paper describes in detail how we are led to the first approximation expression for the solar wind-magnetosphere energy coupling function ɛ, which correlates well with the total energy consumption rate U T of the magnetosphere. It is shown that ɛ is the primary factor which controls the time development of magnetospheric substorms and storms. The finding of this particular expression ɛ indicates how the solar wind couples its energy to the magnetosphere; the solar wind and the magnetosphere constitute a dynamo. In fact, the power P generated by the dynamo can be identified as ɛ by using a dimensional analysis. Furthermore, the finding of ɛ indicates that the magnetosphere is closer to a directly driven system than to an unloading system which stores the generated energy before converting it to substorm and storm energies.

13.02.2026 - 02:56 [ Pepperdine University ]

Physics Professor Gerard Fasel and Seaver Students Present Solar-Terrestrial Interactions at the American Geophysical Union Conference

(January 13, 2026)

Coining the term “near-Earth astrophysics,” Fasel has devoted much of his career to investigating solar-terrestrial interactions between the Sun and Earth, using the aurora borealis to obtain clues regarding the coupling mechanisms between the solar wind and the Earth’s terrestrial magnetic field.

“Stars have winds,” says Fasel. “And this includes our Sun. While solar wind is a relatively continuous stream of particles that interact with the Earth’s magnetic field, the Sun can also produce powerful solar storms. These storms expel billions of charged particles [plasma] coupled to magnetic fields, called coronal mass ejections, which bang up into the Earth’s magnetic field.”

The Earth’s magnetic field lines, Fasel explains, “act like wires” on which these particles travel down into the Earth’s upper atmosphere, specifically the ionosphere. The aurora is an end result of this interaction, where high-energy electrons collide with oxygen to produce green light, while those of lower energy produce a raspberry-red color.

13.11.2025 - 20:18 [ Weather.com ]

Watch: Auroras Light Up Skies Worldwide

November 13, 2025

People across the United States weren’t the only ones treated to a spectacular celestial show. This week’s intense geomagnetic storm illuminated the night sky around the world. Check out some of the most stunning displays from Europe to Mongolia to Australia.

13.11.2025 - 19:54 [ Royal Astronomical Society - ras.ac.uk ]

Early riser! The Sun is already starting its next solar cycle

(July 19, 2024)

The current solar cycle, named Cycle 25 because it is the 25th since 1755 when extensive recording of solar sunspot activity began, started in 2019.

It is not expected to end for another six years but the first signs that the next solar cycle is beginning have been spotted by researchers from the University of Birmingham and presented at the Royal Astronomical Society‘s National Astronomy Meeting in Hull.

13.11.2025 - 19:49 [ EarthSky.org ]

The next solar cycle – Solar Cycle 26 – is already beginning

(July 23, 2024)

Solar max affects activity on the sun’s surface. Sunspots, flares and coronal mass ejections are all more rampant at solar maximum. This leads to a surge in electromagnetic energy hurtling toward Earth, making auroras visible more often and at lower altitudes.

The current solar cycle – Cycle 25 – started in 2019. It has the name Cycle 25 because it’s the 25th since 1755, when extensive recording of solar sunspot activity began.

It is not expected to end for another six years, but researchers have spotted the first signs that the next solar cycle is beginning. Researchers from the University of Birmingham presented their findings at the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting in Hull on July 18, 2024.

13.11.2025 - 18:46 [ Harvard University ]

More than a planetary fender-bender: New study finds Earth collided with dense interstellar cloud, possibly affecting life on planet

(June 10, 2024)

Evidence of a long-ago collision involving the Earth was there in the form of specific radioactive isotopes deposited across the Earth and Moon. There were, however, skeptics.

But now researchers have tracked the sun’s path through the Milky Way back to a crash 2 to 3 million years ago with a dense interstellar cloud. The event was so violent it appears to have collapsed the sun’s protective bubble around the solar system and possibly even affected life on Earth.

(…)

“We don’t often discuss the impact of astrophysics on Earth because the astronomical timescales are very long, and the human species emerged on Earth just a few million years ago,” Loeb said. “But a few million years ago there was the potential for us to be passing through a very dense cloud. We didn’t work out the biological implications, but it’s clear that if you shrink the heliosphere to within the orbit of the Earth around the sun, we are not protected anymore. It could have significant implications for life on Earth.”

13.11.2025 - 17:36 [ Harvard University ]

Detailed understanding of reduced geoeffectiveness of solar cycle 24 in association with geomagnetic storms

(May 2025)

Solar Cycle 24, the weakest in over a century, exhibited significant deviations from previous cycles, beginning with a prolonged minimum, weak polar fields, and asynchronous polar field reversal, leading to hemispheric asymmetry. Sunspot activity declined by approximately 30% compared to Cycle 23, while the overall occurrence rate of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) decreased, although some studies suggest that the rate of halo CMEs relative to total CMEs may have remained relatively stable. This study investigates the impact of weaker solar activity on geomagnetic storm dynamics by analyzing CME properties, solar wind conditions, and their influence on magnetospheric energy transfer. Key findings indicate that a lower heliospheric pressure in Cycle 24 caused CMEs to expand more than in Cycle 23, altering energy transfer to Earth‘s magnetosphere.

13.11.2025 - 17:25 [ Cairo University / Researchgate.net ]

The Shrinking of the Heliosphere Due to Reduced Solar Wind

(December 2009)

Abstract. The heliosphere is the space within which the solar wind dominates and the solar interplanetary magnetic field prevails. Its boundary is determined by the balance between stellar and solar winds. Owing to the present reduction in the solar wind pressure, one would expect that the stellar wind would push the heliosphere inward leading to its shrinkage. In this paper we calculate the extent of the heliosphere at different solar wind status. Backward estimation of the extent of the heliosphere since 1890 is done. It is found that the heliosphere oscillated between 75 and 125 AU between 1890 – 2010. Most important is the forecast of the shrinkage and oscillations of the heliosphere and their implications on the earth. The shrinkage of the heliosphere would allow more invasions of cosmic rays to the earth and planets, increased cloud cover and a cooler Earth.

(…)

1.4 Prediction of the State of solar Activity During The Next Few Decades

Weak solar cycles occur at the bottom of Wolf-Gleissberg cycles. They tend to occur in series of 3-4 cycles. A single weak cycle also occurs in between the two maximums of Wolf-Gleissberg cycle. Since the last weak solar cycles occurred around 1900 while the previous ones occurred around 1800 then the newly started cycle 24 should be a weak solar cycle. However, owing to the 200-years de Verie cycle of the sun, it is more likely that the status of the coming solar activity would be something like those weak cycles around 1800 as shown in Fig 1. Svalgaard (2005) also predicted that cycle 24 would be the lowest so far in the past 100 years with the maximum sunspot number around 75.

13.11.2025 - 16:14 [ NASA Goddard / Youtube ]

11 Years Charting Edge of Solar System

Jun 11, 2020
Far, far beyond the orbits of the planets lie the hazy outlines of the magnetic bubble in space that we call home.

This is the heliosphere, the vast bubble that is generated by the Sun’s magnetic field and envelops all the planets. The borders of this cosmic bubble are not fixed. In response to the Sun’s gasps and sighs, they shrink and stretch over the years.

Now, for the first time, scientists have used an entire solar cycle of data from NASA’s IBEX spacecraft to study how the heliosphere changes over time. Solar cycles last roughly 11 years, as the Sun swings from seasons of high to low activity, and back to high again. With IBEX’s long record, scientists were eager to examine how the Sun’s mood swings play out at the edge of the heliosphere. The results show the shifting outer heliosphere in great detail, deftly sketch the heliosphere’s shape — a matter of debate in recent years, and hint at processes behind one of its most puzzling features. These findings, along with a newly fine-tuned data set, are published in The Astrophysical Journal Supplements on June 10, 2020.

13.11.2025 - 14:00 [ Dagens.com ]

NASA confirms Voyager spacecraft has encountered a “wall of fire” at the edge of the Solar System

(November 6, 2025)

According to NASA, Voyager 1 has now encountered what researchers describe as a “wall of fire,” a zone where temperatures reach between 30,000 and 50,000 kelvin — roughly 30,000 degrees Celsius. The finding was made as part of ongoing efforts to understand the boundary separating our Solar System from interstellar space.

(…)

“An observation made by Voyager 2 confirms a surprising result from Voyager 1: the magnetic field in the region just beyond the heliopause is parallel to the magnetic field inside the heliosphere,” NASA noted. With data from both spacecraft, scientists can now confirm that this alignment is not a coincidence but a defining characteristic of the boundary region.

13.11.2025 - 13:38 [ NASA / Youtube ]

Voyager 1 Trajectory through the Solar System

628,218 views Aug 31, 2017
This visualization tracks the trajectory of the Voyager 1 spacecraft through the solar system. Launched on September 5, 1977, it was one of two spacecraft sent to visit the giant planets of the outer solar system. Voyager 1 flew by Jupiter and Saturn before being directed out of the solar system.

To fit the 40 year history of the mission into a short visualization, the pacing of time accelerates through most of the movie, starting at about 5 days per second at the beginning and speeding up to about 11 months per second after the planet flybys are past.

The termination shock and heliopause are the ‚boundaries‘ created when the plasma between the stars interacts with the plasma flowing outward from the Sun.

13.11.2025 - 13:31 [ LeRavi.org ]

NASA’s Voyager 1 set to become first human-made object to reach a full light-day distance from Earth in 2026

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 has been cruising through space for nearly 47 years, traveling a mind-boggling distance of almost 16 billion miles from Earth. This journey has already broken records—it was the first spacecraft to cross the heliopause, the boundary where the Sun’s solar wind yields to interstellar space. Now, it is on course to reach a distance known as a light-day, meaning the distance that light travels in 24 hours.

Traveling at about 38,000 miles per hour, Voyager 1’s progress may seem slow compared to light speed, but it reveals the vast scales of cosmic distance. Radio signals sent from the spacecraft take nearly 23 hours to reach Earth, which offers a glimpse into the immense challenges of communicating across these astronomical expanses.

12.11.2025 - 23:41 [ New York Post / Youtube ]

Aurora Borealis Displays STUNNED Americans Across the Country

The northern lights lit up the night sky across America on Tuesday, dazzling stargazers from New Hampshire to the heartland with eerie green and orange streaks of cosmic fire.

12.11.2025 - 23:29 [ NPR.org ]

The U.S. saw vivid northern lights as far south as Florida — and more could be coming

The Aurora Borealis was spotted in a large swath of states, including Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Washington state. Northern lights were visible as far south as parts of Florida and Alabama, a relatively rare occurrence that highlights the severity of this week‘s storms.

12.11.2025 - 23:25 [ KRCRTV.com ]

Rare solar storm lights up Northern California skies

A surge in solar activity fueled the vibrant display as the sun reached the peak of its 11-year solar cycle, a period marked by a sharp increase in sunspots and geomagnetic storms.

Around 2019–2020, the sun was at its quietest point; however, with more frequent bursts of solar wind erupting from those sunspots, Earth is now experiencing more substantial and more frequent auroral events.

12.11.2025 - 23:21 [ SWR.de ]

Farbenfrohes Himmelsphänomen: Polarlichter über Baden-Württemberg

Etwas Besonderes sind die Polarlichter in Süddeutschland auch, weil sie kein häufiges Phänomen sind. Skandinavien ist für die Sonnenstürme bekannt. „Tatsächlich ist Polarlicht in Süddeutschland schon sehr, sehr selten“, sagt Liefke.

02.03.2025 - 05:03 [ Jet Propulsion Laboratory / National Aeronautics and Space Administration ]

The Voyagers Are Still Exploring 40 Years Later

(Oct. 12, 2024)

From their unique vantage points – Voyager 1 in the northern hemisphere and Voyager 2 in the southern hemisphere – the spacecraft have already detected differences and asymmetries in the solar wind termination shock, where the wind abruptly slows as it approaches the heliopause. For example, Voyager 2 crossed the termination shock at a distance of about 83.7 AU in the southern hemisphere. (One AU, or astronomical unit, is equal to 150 (million) kilometers (93 million miles), the distance between Earth and the Sun.) That’s about 10 AU closer to the Sun than where Voyager 1 crossed the shock in the north. As shown in this diagram, Voyager 1 traveled through the compressed “nose” of the termination shock and Voyager 2 is expected to travel through the flank of the termination shock.