6.5 Earthquake reported from Fiji RegionĪpril 5 B class solar x ray flares were observedĪpril 6 C class solar x ray flare was observed.Landslides in Hideaway Bay Australia due from floodingĪpril 1 Mid level C class solar x ray flares erupting with a partial halo CMEĪpril 4 Multiple CME eruptions with B class solar x ray flares.March 31 low level C class solar x ray flares still erupting 4.7 magnitude earthquake in Fiji Region.March 30 C and B class solar x ray flares continue to erupt
The planet has been full of activity lately… Aurora have been observed on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune also have magnetic fields. Although the solar wind does affect Jupiter’s magnetosphere, the dynamics of Jupiter’s magnetosphere are affected more strongly by the volcanoes on Jupiter’s moon Io, which create a feature called the Io plasma torus inside Jupiter’s magnetosphere. If I remember correctly, Ganymede is the only moon in the Solar System to have its own magnetosphere. One of Jupiter’s moons, Ganymede, also has a strong magnetic field and its own magnetosphere.
Jupiter has a very strong magnetic field and very intense radiation belts. This is one of the things being investigated by MESSENGER, which is the spacecraft first to orbit Mercury.
The lack of an atmosphere and the proximity of Mercury to the Sun means that the interaction of its magnetosphere with the solar wind may be very different from the interaction between Earth’s magnetosphere and the solar wind. It is kind of interesting to note that while Mercury does not have an atmosphere like the other Terrestrial planets, it does have a strong magnetic field. Mars only has weak remnants of a magnetic field in rocks that were formed long ago when Mars may have had a much stronger, global magnetic field. Venus and Mars do not have strong, global magnetic fields. “Some of the other planets have strong magnetic fields, just like the Earth does. You can read more about Galileo and William Gilbert here-”Īnd about George Hale and Kristian Birkeland here – It was not until the first satellites were launched in the late 1950s that scientists were able to confirm Birkeland’s theories about the connection between the Sun and the aurora. A few years later, Birkeland proposed the existence of a solar wind as well as field-aligned currents in the Earth’s magnetosphere, but his ideas were controversial for a long time because they could not be verified using ground-based measurements. In 1908, an American astronomer named George Ellery Hale realized that sunspots had magnetic structure. Birkeland was an adventurer who made this discovery through his polar expeditions in 1902-03 and laboratory experiments using terellas similar to the ones that Gilbert used. A Norwegian scientist named Kristian Birkeland was the first to discover that the aurora borealis or northern lights were related to the Earth’s magnetic field in the early 1900s. However it would still be years before people understood the connection between the Earth’s magnetic field and solar activity. Years later, around 1612-13, Galileo made observations of sunspots. He also established a lot of the magnetic terminology we use today. William Gilbert was one of the first to study the Earth’s magnetic field using a round lodestone he called a terella to simulate the Earth. However, they did not really understand the Earth’s global magnetic field. When William Gilbert was alive, people already knew about the magnetic properties of iron ore (lodestone) and used compasses in navigation. One of the first people to study the Earth’s magnetic field was an English scientist named William Gilbert who lived from 1544 to 1603. “That is a great question! It took many different scientists centuries to work out that the Sun’s magnetic field and solar activity affected the Earth’s magnetosphere. The entire question which was asked on NASA Solar Week, ” When was this first discovered,that the sun’s magnetic effects had a direct effect on earth, and how does it on other planets?”