Sun, Earth and sky

The Sun is enveloped by a hot, tenuous million-degree corona that expands to create a continuous solar wind that sweeps past all the planets and fills the heliosphere. The solar wind is modulated by strong gusts that are initiated by powerful explosions on the Sun, including solar flares and coronal mass ejections. This dynamic, invisible outer atmosphere of the Sun is currently under observation with the soft X-ray telescope aboard the Yohkoh spacecraft, whose results are presented. We also show observations from the Ulysses spacecraft that is now passing over the solar pole, sampling the solar wind in this region for the first time. Two other spacecraft, Voyager 1 and 2, have recently detected the outer edge of the invisible heliosphere, roughly halfway to the nearest star. Magnetic solar activity, the total radiative output from the Sun, and the Earth's mean global surface temperature all vary with the 11-year sunspot cycle in which the total number of sunspots varies from a maximum to a minimum and back to a maximum again in about 11 years. The terrestrial magnetic field hollows out a protective magnetic cavity, called the magnetosphere, within the solar wind. This protection is incomplete, however, so the Sun feeds an unseen world of high-speed particles and magnetic fields that encircle the Earth in space. These particles endanger spacecraft and astronauts, and also produce terrestrial aurorae. An international flotilla of spacecraft is now sampling the weak points in this magnetic defense. Similar spacecraft have also discovered a new radiation belt, in addition to the familiar Van Alien belts, except fed by interstellar ions instead of electrons and protons from the Sun.