NEWSNOTES

Better Solar-Storm Forecasting

Solar astronomers may have discovered a robust technique for predicting
energetic ejections of material from the
Suns surface.
Coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, typically propel a billion tons of plasma
from the Suns surface in less than a day.
When they occur on the Suns Earthward side, CMEs can drive the expelled
particles toward our planets magnetosphere, where they arrive three or four

days later at speeds in excess of one million kilometers per hour. The strongest
such events can disrupt power grids or
damage spacecraft in Earth orbit.
On April 7, 1997, a forceful CME took
place while two spacecraft were on watch:
the Yohkoh satellite, which records X-ray
images of the Suns surface, and the Solar
and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO),
whose white-light coronagraph blocks the
Suns overwhelmingly bright disk in order

13:28:42 U.T.

17:40:40 U.T.

The S-shaped hot spot (boxed) in this X-ray view of the Sun preceded a powerful solar storm
on April 7, 1997. After the solar outburst of charged particles took place (seen in the visiblelight views at the tops of these pages), the region dramatically changed shape and faded as
well. This suggests that a magnetic-field loop abruptly shifted, releasing hot plasma and propelling it toward Earth. Yohkoh satellite images courtesy Richard Canfield.

14:27 U.T.

14:59 U.T.

to see any ejected particles that may be

present. Just before SOHO detected the
explosions first signs, Yohkoh imaged an
S-shaped hot spot, or active region, in
the southeastern quadrant of the solar
disk. Four hours later, when the CME
had largely run its course, the S-shaped
region, or sigmoid, had dramatically
changed form and faded somewhat. In a
1997 paper, Alphonse C. Sterling (Computational Physics, Inc.) and Hugh S.
Hudson (Solar Physics Research Corporation) described these phenomena and
suggested that the region had changed
shape because magnetic fields had abruptly shifted, releasing plasma in the process.
Now a team led by Richard C. Canfield
(Montana State University) has confirmed the predictive power of the sigmoids. In a March 9th NASA press briefing, Canfield described a statistical study
of two years of Yohkoh images, which
showed that sigmoids indeed frequently
precede CMEs, as suggested by the April
7, 1997, event. He also noted that their
predictive power is enhanced when astronomers know the sizes of the sunspots
in the same magnetically active regions. If
the sunspots are relatively small, said
Canfield, then sigmoidal active regions

Probing the History of High-Redshift Helium

Two billion years after the Big Bang, something suddenly
happened to space.
The Big Bangs nuclear reactions had produced only one helium atom for every 10 of hydrogen. But the latter only had one
electron to lose to collisions and energetic photons, while the
former had two, with the second being much harder to remove.
Thus in the early universes rarefied intergalactic medium, helium was by far the likeliest element to absorb photons of farultraviolet light, which can knock off its remaining electron.
And despite the intergalactic mediums unimaginably low density (less than one helium atom per cubic meter), enough helium
was present to make the universe opaque to ultraviolet eyes.
Or so things stood until about two billion years after the Big
Bang, when galaxies were four times closer to one another (on
average) than they are today. But shortly thereafter, something
knocked the remaining electrons off most of the so-called He II
ions (those that had retained one electron). As a result, the
universe abruptly became transparent to far-ultraviolet light.
This is the scenario attested to by recent studies of quasar
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July 1999 Sky & Telescope

spectra. The overwhelmingly bright nuclei of certain distant

galaxies, quasars serve as sensitive probes of any intergalactic
gases that lie between us and them (S&T: September 1997, page
28). Most recently, the Hubble Space Telescopes second-generation spectrograph, STIS, has enabled Sara R. Heap (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center), Scott F. Anderson (University of
Washington), and their respective colleagues to map out He II
absorption in the spectra of two high-redshift quasars.
As Heap explains, it remains unproven what stripped the
early universes He II ions of their remaining electrons. But the
likeliest culprits are quasars themselves. These black-holepowered lighthouses produced copious ultraviolet light, and their
numbers began to dramatically increase when the universe was
roughly two billion years old (May issue, page 40). Nevertheless,
says NASA/Goddard coinvestigator Gerard M. Williger, There
may be other sources which contribute too. This topic has been
debated for years and is a [subject] of active research. One obstacle a shortage of bright, high-redshift quasars may
soon be removed by projects like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

1999 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

15:21 U.T.

15:52 U.T.

SOHO IMAGES COURTESY ROBERT DUFFIN, NAVAL RESEARCH LABORATORY

are about four times as likely to erupt as

nonsigmoidal ones. But if the associated
sunspots are large, the sigmoid is virtually certain to erupt as it passes across the
[Suns] disk. Details appear in Geophysical Research Letters for March 15th.
For the time being, SOHO itself can
already provide three or four days warning of geomagnetic storms, since Earthtargeting CMEs take that long to reach
us. However, the new X-ray-based diagnostic may add valuable lead time as
well as indicate the severity of an upcoming storm. The sigmoid-CME connection also holds theoretical significance: according to veteran solar
astrophysicist David M. Rust (Johns
Hopkins University), it may shed light
on the dynamo that drives the 11-year
cycle of solar magnetic activity.

The Measure of Eros

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Had things gone according to plan,

NASAs Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous
spacecraft would now be snugly in
orbit around minor planet 433 Eros. But
last December 20th a botched rocket
firing caused the spacecraft to sail past
its target (March issue, page 18).The unintended flyby wasnt devoid of scientific results, however. As reported by
Joseph Veverka (Cornell University) at
the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas, last March,
NEARs best images resolve features on
Eros roughly 400 meters across. Overall,
the asteroid measures a very elongated
33 by 13 by 13 kilometers. In addition,
Veverka noted, the flyby was close
enough (3,827 km) and slow enough
(965 meters per second) to alter NEARs
trajectory very slightly. These deviations
were barely measurable by tracking stations, but they allowed Donald K. Yeomans (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) to determine that Eros has a mass of about 7
trillion tons. Its bulk density is about 2.5
grams per cubic centimeter roughly
twice that of 253 Mathilde, whose interior is apparently very porous.
1999 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Sky & Telescope July 1999

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