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The Sun Spot

    Solar Tour Pit Stop #6: L1

    Float with NASA's Fleet at Lagrange Point 1! Greetings from Lagrange Point 1, or L1, the 6th stop on our solar tour! This is a special place between Earth and the Sun where their gravitational forces are balanced. It's a great spot for spacecraft because they'll stay put between the two objects and orbit with …

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    Solar Tour Pit Stop #5: Earth’s Magnetosphere

    Earth's Protective Shield Today on our solar tour, we're exploring the magnetosphere – the last stop before heading into space! Earth's magnetosphere is created by our planet's molten core and protects us from the solar wind, the constant stream of radiation and charged particles coming from the Sun! We're not alone (magnetically speaking) Earth isn't …

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    Solar Tour Pit Stop #4: Aurora

    Earth's Polar Light Show Welcome to the next stop on the solar tour! Auroras are the bright lights seen at Earth's north and south poles. Energy and particles from the Sun travel to Earth and interact with our planet's magnetic field. This interaction causes the colorful lights seen in auroras. Meet STEVE People around the …

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    Solar Tour Pit Stop #3: Earth’s Upper Atmosphere

    Earth's Interface to Space Welcome to Earth's upper atmosphere, where things get weird. Home to: Earth's hottest (4,500 degrees F) AND coldest (-120 degrees F) temperatures 50 tons of incoming meteors, daily Air that is literally electric Satellite communications The ionosphere Lucky for us, the Sun's most harmful rays don't reach the ground. Instead they're …

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    Solar Tour Pit Stop #2: Eclipses

    A Total Solar Eclipse in Antarctica! Early this morning, there was a total solar eclipse across Antarctica! During a total solar eclipse, the Moon blocks out the Sun, creating the illusion of night during the day and a breathtaking sight in our sky. Join NASA Edge at 1:30 p.m. EST on NASA TV to see …

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    Solar Tour Pit Stop #1: Earth

    Greetings from Earth! Our solar tour begins on Earth. From here, one star shines brighter than all the rest. It's the closest star and the center of our solar system: our Sun. Earth is in the Goldilocks zone, just the right distance from the Sun to be habitable. A mission to touch the Sun We …

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    Welcome to NASA’s #SolarTour!

    Welcome to NASA's #SolarTour! The Sun has an immense influence in space. It shapes and impacts our entire solar system in ways that we are still trying to understand. To help unravel some of the Sun's biggest mysteries, NASA launched Parker Solar Probe in 2018 to study the Sun up close. This year, the mission …

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    NASA’s SunRISE Mission Studying Solar Particle Storms Moves Toward Launch

    An animation shows a mass of material eruption from the Sun and creating a burst of particles.

    NASA's SunRISE mission — short for the Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment — passed a mission review on Sept. 8, 2021, moving the mission into its next phase. "SunRISE will detect and study eruptions of radio waves from the Sun that often precede major solar events containing high energy particle radiation," said Justin Kasper, SunRISE …

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    GOLD’s Top-Down View of Our Atmosphere

    Satellite data overlaid over an outline of Earth shows twin bands of emission near the equator at night.

    From its vantage point in geostationary orbit, NASA's GOLD mission – short for Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk – has given scientists a new view of dynamics in Earth's upper atmosphere. Together, three research papers show different ways the upper atmosphere changes unexpectedly, even during relatively mild conditions that aren't typically thought to …

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