Solar Dynamics Observatory Celebrates First Year

But the only times when a plane can do that is when the GPS system is operating. In times of heavy solar storms, the GPS satellite system tends to not work well, and the airlines have to take the shorter, but more expensive route. "They can only go over the pole when the GPS is working and they have constant radio contact." Pesnell said.

One way that this solar cycle is different, Pesnell said, is that the holes in the corona didn't simply migrate to the poles and fade away. "We still have these dark patches," he said. "In previous cycles those would have disappeared." But that is no bad thing. When a solar cycle acts in a new way, it offers new data. "We've had four solar cycles since the space age started, and we've gotten a little spoiled."

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The biggest mystery is the solar corona, visible during total eclipses as a bright halo around the sun. The sun's surface is about 5,800 degrees Kelvin, or about 10,000 Fahrenheit. But the corona, which extends several times the radius of the sun into space, is orders of magnitude hotter, reaching millions of degrees. Nobody knows why. Pesnell said a lot of people are still working on the problem, and it will be some time before anyone can even say which set of hypotheses are likely to be right.

An intriguing observation is in the convection zone of the sun, which extends from the visible surface some 150,000 miles in. Looking at the SDO data, it was found that the cells - the regions of convection - all change size in unison. How they could be "talking" to each other remains a mystery, Pesnell said, but it shows there is an underlying mechanism that hasn't been discovered yet.

SDO isn't the only satellite observing the sun. The Hinode mission, a joint effort from Japan, the United Kingdom, and NASA, is watching the sun as well, and doing so in great detail. But it can only see a small part of the sun at a time. Hinode takes images in the X-Ray and ultraviolet, and can take readings of the sun's magnetosphere as well. Pesnell calls it a complement to SDO, as it can get images in much more detail than other satellites, but can't see the "big picture."

For that, there's the STEREO mission, which allows observations of the whole sun for the first time, allowing for better solar weather forecasting and seeing what happens in areas humans were not able to see before. "SDO is the third lens," Pesnell said. "We need to know what happens on the entire sun."

Other satellites include SOHO, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, which has been operating for 15 years, observing the chromosphere (a thin outer layer of the Sun's atmosphere) the corona and the transition region between the two. There's also the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE), which provides measurements of incoming X-ray, ultraviolet, visible, near-infrared, and total solar radiation. NASA has yet another mission scheduled for 2015, which will approach within 3.7 million miles of the Sun, and be the fastest manmade object ever. That probe will study the corona and explore the Sun's magnetic fields and solar wind.

Pesnell said that the data is still coming in, and will likely answer many questions - as well as revealing more that no one thought of yet.

To contact the reporter responsible for this story call (646) 461 6917 or email j.emspak@IBTimes.com.