Benjamin Dean Lecture: New Views of Solar Coronal Mass Ejections: Understanding the Origins of Space Weather

In the past five years solar physics has entered a golden age in which visible light, extreme ultraviolet (EUV), and X-ray solar telescopes are viewing the Sun continuously, and from multiple angles, from space. Dr. Berger will show recent observations from the Japanese/US/UK Hinode mission, and the NASA STEREO and Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) missions that reveal strange new flows in solar prominences and coronal cavities, the structures that comprise so-called "coronal mass ejections" or CMEs. CMEs are the drivers of all large particle and magnetic storms in the solar system and understanding, and ultimately predicting, this "space weather" is a major goal of modern space physics.

Speaker: Dr. Thomas Berger Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory