query: What is solar wind?

title: Solar wind

text: Solar wind The solar wind is a stream of charged particles released from the upper atmosphere of the Sun, called the corona. This plasma consists of mostly electrons, protons and alpha particles with kinetic energy between 0.5 and 10 keV. Embedded within the solar-wind plasma is the interplanetary magnetic field. The solar wind varies in density, temperature and speed over time and over solar latitude and longitude. Its particles can escape the Sun's gravity because of their high energy resulting from the high temperature of the corona, which in turn is a result of the coronal magnetic field. At a

title: Solar wind

text: Dryer, A self-consistent solution of the three-fluid model of the Solar Wind. Astrophys. J., 222 (2), 689-695, 1978. S. Cuperman and N. Metzler, Comments on Acceleration of Solar Wind He++3 effects of Resonant and nonresonant interactions with transverse waves. J. Geophys. Res. 84 (NA5), 2139-2140 (1979) N. Metzler, S. Cuperman, M. Dryer and P. Rosenau, A time-dependent two-fluid model with thermal conduction for Solar Wind. Astrophys. J., 231 (3) 960-976, 1979. Solar wind The solar wind is a stream of charged particles released from the upper atmosphere of the Sun, called the corona. This plasma consists of mostly electrons, protons

title: Solar wind

text: and transient, its surface is bathed in radiation. Mercury has an intrinsic magnetic field, so under normal solar wind conditions, the solar wind cannot penetrate its magnetosphere and particles only reach the surface in the cusp regions. During coronal mass ejections, however, the magnetopause may get pressed into the surface of the planet, and under these conditions, the solar wind may interact freely with the planetary surface. The Earth's Moon has no atmosphere or intrinsic magnetic field, and consequently its surface is bombarded with the full solar wind. The Project Apollo missions deployed passive aluminum collectors in an attempt to

title: Solar wind

text: gently than, CMEs. Over the Sun's lifetime, the interaction of its surface layers with the escaping solar wind has significantly decreased its surface rotation rate. The wind is considered responsible for comets' tails, along with the Sun's radiation. The solar wind contributes to fluctuations in celestial radio waves observed on the Earth, through an effect called interplanetary scintillation. Where the solar wind intersects with a planet that has a well-developed magnetic field (such as Earth, Jupiter or Saturn), the particles are deflected by the Lorentz force. This region, known as the magnetosphere, causes the particles to travel around the planet

title: Solar wind

text: is the density in particles/cm and V is the speed in km/s of the solar wind. Both the fast and slow solar wind can be interrupted by large, fast-moving bursts of plasma called interplanetary coronal mass ejections, or ICMEs. ICMEs are the interplanetary manifestation of solar coronal mass ejections, which are caused by release of magnetic energy at the Sun. CMEs are often called "solar storms" or "space storms" in the popular media. They are sometimes, but not always, associated with solar flares, which are another manifestation of magnetic energy release at the Sun. ICMEs cause shock waves in the

title: Solar wind

text: reach the terminal velocity of 400 km/s, which allows them to feed the solar wind. At the same temperature, electrons, due to their much smaller mass, reach escape velocity and build up an electric field that further accelerates ions away from the Sun. The total number of particles carried away from the Sun by the solar wind is about 1.3 per second. Thus, the total mass loss each year is about (2–3) solar masses, or about (1.3–1.9) million tonnes per second. This is equivalent to losing a mass equal to the Earth every 150 million years. However, only about 0.01%

title: Solar wind

text: a steady stream of particles that pushes the comet's tail away. Wilfried Schröder claimed that Paul Ahnert was the first to relate solar wind to comet tail direction based on observations of the comet Whipple-Fedke (1942g). Eugene Parker realised heat flowing from the Sun in Chapman's model and the comet tail blowing away from the Sun in Biermann's hypothesis had to be the result of the same phenomenon, which he termed the "solar wind". In 1957, Parker showed, even though the Sun's corona is strongly attracted by solar gravity, it is such a good heat conductor that it is still

title: Solar wind

text: deflects most of the charged particles; however some of the charged particles are trapped in the Van Allen radiation belt. A smaller number of particles from the solar wind manage to travel, as though on an electromagnetic energy transmission line, to the Earth's upper atmosphere and ionosphere in the auroral zones. The only time the solar wind is observable on the Earth is when it is strong enough to produce phenomena such as the aurora and geomagnetic storms. Bright auroras strongly heat the ionosphere, causing its plasma to expand into the magnetosphere, increasing the size of the plasma geosphere and

title: Solar wind

text: attempt to understand the mechanisms that cause particles to be heated and accelerated as solar wind. During its seven year mission, the probe will make twenty-four orbits of the sun, passing further into the corona with each orbit's perihelion, ultimately passing within 0.04 astronomical units of the sun's surface. It is the first NASA spacecraft named for a living person, and Parker himself, at age 91, was on hand to observe the launch. While early models of the solar wind relied primarily on thermal energy to accelerate the material, by the 1960s it was clear that thermal acceleration alone cannot

title: Solar wind

text: account for the high speed of solar wind. An additional unknown acceleration mechanism is required and likely relates to magnetic fields in the solar atmosphere. The Sun's corona, or extended outer layer, is a region of plasma that is heated to over a million kelvin. As a result of thermal collisions, the particles within the inner corona have a range and distribution of speeds described by a Maxwellian distribution. The mean velocity of these particles is about 145 km/s, which is well below the solar escape velocity of 618 km/s. However, a few of the particles achieve energies sufficient to

title: Solar wind

text: Earth was being continually bombarded by "rays of electric corpuscles emitted by the Sun". In 1916, Birkeland proposed that, "From a physical point of view it is most probable that solar rays are neither exclusively negative nor positive rays, but of both kinds". In other words, the solar wind consists of both negative electrons and positive ions. Three years later in 1919, Frederick Lindemann also suggested that particles of both polarities, protons as well as electrons, come from the Sun. Around the 1930s, scientists had determined that the temperature of the solar corona must be a million degrees Celsius because

title: Solar wind

text: and N. Metzler, Solution of 3-fluid model equations with anomalous transport coefficients for thequiet Solar Wind. Astrophys.J., 196 (1) 205-219, 1975 S. Cuperman, N. Metzler and M. Spygelglass, Confirmation of known numerical solutions for the quiet Solar Wind equations. Astrophys. J., 198 (3), 755-759, 1975. S.Cuperman and N. Metzler, Relative magnitude of streaming velocities of alpha particles and protons at 1AU. Astrophys. and Space Sci. 45 (2) 411-417,1976. N. Metzler. A multi-fluid model for stellar winds.Proceedings of the L.D.de Feiter Memorial Symposium on the Study of Traveling Interplanetary Phenomena. AFGL-TR-77-0309, Air Force Systems Command, USAF, 1978. N. Metzler and M.

title: Solar wind

text: of two fluids) as a result of differences in thickness and numerous other characteristics of the boundary layer. Experts believe that this was the first occasion that the appearance of Kelvin-Helmholtz waves at the magnetopause had been displayed at high latitude dawnward orientation of the IMF. These waves are being seen in unforeseen places under solar wind conditions that were formerly believed to be undesired for their generation. These discoveries show how Earth's magnetosphere can be penetrated by solar particles under specific IMF circumstances. The findings are also relevant to studies of magnetospheric progressions around other planetary bodies. This study

title: Solar wind

text: rather than bombarding the atmosphere or surface. The magnetosphere is roughly shaped like a hemisphere on the side facing the Sun, then is drawn out in a long wake on the opposite side. The boundary of this region is called the magnetopause, and some of the particles are able to penetrate the magnetosphere through this region by partial reconnection of the magnetic field lines. The solar wind is responsible for the overall shape of Earth's magnetosphere. Fluctuations in its speed, density, direction, and entrained magnetic field strongly affect Earth's local space environment. For example, the levels of ionizing radiation and

title: Solar wind

text: Other related phenomena include the aurora (northern and southern lights), the plasma tails of comets that always point away from the Sun, and geomagnetic storms that can change the direction of magnetic field lines. The existence of particles flowing outward from the Sun to the Earth was first suggested by British astronomer Richard C. Carrington. In 1859, Carrington and Richard Hodgson independently made the first observation of what would later be called a solar flare. This is a sudden, localised increase in brightness on the solar disc, which is now known to often occur in conjunction with an episodic ejection

title: Solar wind

text: these waves enable incoming charged particles of solar wind to breach the magnetopause. This suggests that the magnetic bubble forms more as a filter than a continuous barrier. This latest discovery occurred through the distinctive arrangement of the four identical Cluster spacecraft, which fly in a controlled configuration through near-Earth space. As they sweep from the magnetosphere into interplanetary space and back again, the fleet provides exceptional three-dimensional insights on the phenomena that connect the sun to Earth. The research characterised variances in formation of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) largely influenced by Kelvin–Helmholtz instability (which occur at the interface

title: Solar phenomena

text: move about and can travel at a few hundred meters per second when they first appear. The solar wind is a stream of plasma released from the Sun's upper atmosphere. It consists of mostly electrons and protons with energies usually between 1.5 and 10 keV. The stream of particles varies in density, temperature and speed over time and over solar longitude. These particles can escape the Sun's gravity because of their high energy. The solar wind is divided into the slow solar wind and the fast solar wind. The slow solar wind has a velocity of about , a temperature

title: Solar phenomena

text: the solar wind. The Earth's magnetic field traps its particles, many of which travel toward the poles where they are accelerated toward Earth. Collisions between these ions and the atmosphere release energy in the form of auroras appearing in large circles around the poles. Auroras are more frequent and brighter during the solar cycle's intense phase when CMEs increase the intensity of the solar wind. A geomagnetic storm is a temporary disturbance of the Earth's Magnetosphere caused by a solar wind shock wave and/or cloud of magnetic field that interacts with the Earth's magnetic field. The increase in solar wind

title: Wind

text: that particles gain through a process that is not well understood. The solar wind creates the Heliosphere, a vast bubble in the interstellar medium surrounding the Solar System. Planets require large magnetic fields in order to reduce the ionization of their upper atmosphere by the solar wind. Other phenomena caused by the solar wind include geomagnetic storms that can knock out power grids on Earth, the aurorae such as the Northern Lights, and the plasma tails of comets that always point away from the sun. Strong winds at Venus's cloud tops circle the planet every four to five earth days.

title: Wind

text: follow the air currents over hills and through valleys. United States wildfire operations revolve around a 24-hour "fire day" that begins at 10:00 a.m. because of the predictable increase in intensity resulting from the daytime warmth. The solar wind is quite different from a terrestrial wind, in that its origin is the sun, and it is composed of charged particles that have escaped the sun's atmosphere. Similar to the solar wind, the planetary wind is composed of light gases that escape planetary atmospheres. Over long periods of time, the planetary wind can radically change the composition of planetary atmospheres. The

title: Wind

text: Wind Wind is the flow of gases on a large scale. On the surface of the Earth, wind consists of the bulk movement of air. In outer space, solar wind is the movement of gases or charged particles from the Sun through space, while planetary wind is the outgassing of light chemical elements from a planet's atmosphere into space. Winds are commonly classified by their spatial scale, their speed, the types of forces that cause them, the regions in which they occur, and their effect. The strongest observed winds on a planet in the Solar System occur on Neptune and

title: Solar System

text: shaped by two separate forces: the solar wind and the Sun's gravity. The limit of the solar wind's influence is roughly four times Pluto's distance from the Sun; this "heliopause", the outer boundary of the heliosphere, is considered the beginning of the interstellar medium. The Sun's Hill sphere, the effective range of its gravitational dominance, is thought to extend up to a thousand times farther and encompasses the theorized Oort cloud. The heliosphere is a stellar-wind bubble, a region of space dominated by the Sun, which radiates at roughly 400 km/s its solar wind, a stream of charged particles, until

title: Solar flare

text: below. (The total hemisphere area "A" = 15.5 × 10 km.) A flare then is classified taking S or a number that represents its size and a letter that represents its peak intensity, v.g.: Sn is a "normal sunflare". Solar flares strongly influence the local space weather in the vicinity of the Earth. They can produce streams of highly energetic particles in the solar wind or stellar wind, known as a solar proton event. These particles can impact the Earth's magnetosphere (see main article at geomagnetic storm), and present radiation hazards to spacecraft and astronauts. Additionally, massive solar flares are

title: Solar sail

text: The radius of the sail is from the electric field rather than the actual wire itself, making the sail lighter. The craft can also be steered by regulating the electric charge of the wires. A practical electric sail would have 50–100 straightened wires with a length of about 20 km each. Electric solar wind sails can adjust their electrostatic fields and sail attitudes. A magnetic sail would also employ the solar wind. However, the magnetic field deflects the electrically charged particles in the wind. It uses wire loops, and runs a static current through them instead of applying a static

title: Wind

text: prevailing winds range in speed from along the equator to at the poles. At 70° S latitude on Neptune, a high-speed jet stream travels at a speed of . The fastest wind on any known planet is on HD 80606 b located 190 light years away, where it blows at more than 11,000 mph or 5 km/s. Wind Wind is the flow of gases on a large scale. On the surface of the Earth, wind consists of the bulk movement of air. In outer space, solar wind is the movement of gases or charged particles from the Sun through space,

title: Solar phenomena

text: Solar flares strongly influence space weather near the Earth. They can produce streams of highly energetic particles in the solar wind, known as a solar proton event. These particles can impact the Earth's magnetosphere in the form of a geomagnetic storm and present radiation hazards to spacecraft and astronauts. Irradiance is the power per unit area produced by the Sun in the form of electromagnetic radiation. Irradiance may be measured in space or at the Earth's surface after atmospheric absorption and scattering. Total solar irradiance (TSI), is a measure of the solar radiative power per unit area normal to the

title: Parker Solar Probe

text: project. The "Parker Solar Probe" will be the first spacecraft to fly into the low solar corona. It will assess the structure and dynamics of the Sun's coronal plasma and magnetic field, the energy flow that heats the solar corona and impels the solar wind, and the mechanisms that accelerate energetic particles. The spacecraft's systems are protected from the extreme heat and radiation near the Sun by a solar shield. Incident solar radiation at perihelion is approximately , or 475 times the intensity at Earth orbit. The solar shield is hexagonal, mounted on the Sun-facing side of the spacecraft, in

title: Wind (spacecraft)

text: Composition Experiment (SMS), The Energetic Particles: Acceleration, Composition, and Transport (EPACT) investigation, the Solar Wind Experiment (SWE), a Three-Dimensional Plasma and Energetic Particle Investigation (3DP), the Transient Gamma-Ray Spectrometer (TGRS), and the Radio and Plasma Wave Investigation (WAVES). The Konus and TGRS instruments are primarily for gamma-ray and high energy photon observations of solar flares or gamma-ray bursts and part of the Gamma-ray Coordinates Network. The SMS experiment measures the mass and mass-to-charge ratios of heavy ions. The SWE and 3DP experiments are meant to measure/analyze the lower energy (below 10 MeV) solar wind protons and electrons. The WAVES and

title: Solar wind

text: of the Sun's total mass has been lost through the solar wind. Other stars have much stronger stellar winds that result in significantly higher mass loss rates. The solar wind is observed to exist in two fundamental states, termed the slow solar wind and the fast solar wind, though their differences extend well beyond their speeds. In near-Earth space, the slow solar wind is observed to have a velocity of 300–500 km/s, a temperature of 1.4–1.6 K and a composition that is a close match to the corona. By contrast, the fast solar wind has a typical velocity of 750

title: Solar wind

text: between 1996 and 2001 showed that emission of the slow solar wind occurred at latitudes up to 30–35° during the solar minimum (the period of lowest solar activity), then expanded toward the poles as the solar cycle approached maximum. At solar maximum, the poles were also emitting a slow solar wind. The fast solar wind originates from coronal holes, which are funnel-like regions of open field lines in the Sun's magnetic field. Such open lines are particularly prevalent around the Sun's magnetic poles. The plasma source is small magnetic fields created by convection cells in the solar atmosphere. These fields

title: Solar wind

text: km/s, a temperature of 8 K and it nearly matches the composition of the Sun's photosphere. The slow solar wind is twice as dense and more variable in nature than the fast solar wind. The slow solar wind appears to originate from a region around the Sun's equatorial belt that is known as the "streamer belt", where coronal streamers are produced by magnetic flux open to the heliosphere draping over closed magnetic loops. The exact coronal structures involved in slow solar wind formation and the method by which the material is released is still under debate. Observations of the Sun

title: Solar wind

text: sample the solar wind, and lunar soil returned for study confirmed that the lunar regolith is enriched in atomic nuclei deposited from the solar wind. These elements may prove useful resources for lunar colonies. The solar wind "blows a bubble" in the interstellar medium (the rarefied hydrogen and helium gas that permeates the galaxy). The point where the solar wind's strength is no longer great enough to push back the interstellar medium is known as the heliopause and is often considered to be the outer border of the Solar System. The distance to the heliopause is not precisely known and

title: Solar wind

text: suggests that Kelvin-Helmholtz waves can be a somewhat common, and possibly constant, instrument for the entrance of solar wind into terrestrial magnetospheres under various IMF orientations. The solar wind affects other incoming cosmic rays interacting with planetary atmospheres. Moreover, planets with a weak or non-existent magnetosphere are subject to atmospheric stripping by the solar wind. Venus, the nearest and most similar planet to Earth, has 100 times denser atmosphere, with little or no geo-magnetic field. Space probes discovered a comet-like tail that extends to Earth's orbit. Earth itself is largely protected from the solar wind by its magnetic field, which

title: Solar wind

text: alone. Parker's model predicted that the wind should make the transition to supersonic flow at an altitude of about 4 solar radii from the photosphere (surface); but the transition (or "sonic point") now appears to be much lower, perhaps only 1 solar radius above the photosphere, suggesting that some additional mechanism accelerates the solar wind away from the Sun. The acceleration of the fast wind is still not understood and cannot be fully explained by Parker's theory. The gravitational and electromagnetic explanation for this acceleration is, however, detailed in an earlier paper by 1970 Nobel laureate for Physics, Hannes Alfvén.

title: Solar Wind (comics)

text: comics. Solar Wind (comics) Solar Wind is a British small press comics anthology. Edited by Cosmic Ray (a pseudonym for small press comics publisher Paul Scott), the comic is devoted to gentle parodies of British boys' comics of the 1970s and 80s. Eight issues in all were produced between 2003 and 2007, with the final issue published in November 2007 as the Solar Wind Summer Special. Emerging originally from the fanbase of best selling British comic 2000AD, Solar Wind has featured writers and artists including Gordon Rennie, Rufus Dayglo, Al Ewing and PJ Holden. The comics have been collected in

title: Solar Wind (comics)

text: Solar Wind (comics) Solar Wind is a British small press comics anthology. Edited by Cosmic Ray (a pseudonym for small press comics publisher Paul Scott), the comic is devoted to gentle parodies of British boys' comics of the 1970s and 80s. Eight issues in all were produced between 2003 and 2007, with the final issue published in November 2007 as the Solar Wind Summer Special. Emerging originally from the fanbase of best selling British comic 2000AD, Solar Wind has featured writers and artists including Gordon Rennie, Rufus Dayglo, Al Ewing and PJ Holden. The comics have been collected in "The

title: Solar wind

text: radio interference can vary by factors of hundreds to thousands; and the shape and location of the magnetopause and bow shock wave upstream of it can change by several Earth radii, exposing geosynchronous satellites to the direct solar wind. These phenomena are collectively called space weather. From the European Space Agency's Cluster mission, a new study has taken place that proposes that it is easier for the solar wind to infiltrate the magnetosphere than previously believed. A group of scientists directly observed the existence of certain waves in the solar wind that were not expected. A recent study shows that

title: Solar Wind (comics)

text: Bumper Book of Solar Wind" Volume 1 and 2, available at Lulu.com. "Don't let anyone tell you different: Solar Wind is the funniest comic of the decade." - Comics International #161 In 2004, the title won the Best Independent Comic Award at the British Diamond Comics Awards. In 2006, Solar Wind was nominated for the Eagle Awards for best British Black and White comic. The comic was three times SFX Fanzine of the Month. "Solar Wind" has two direct spin-off publications - "Big War Comic" (1 issue) and "Sunny For Girls" (2 issues). The same small-press publisher also produces "Omnivistascope"

title: Solar wind

text: The first numerical simulation of the solar wind in the solar corona including closed and open field lines was performed by Pneuman and Kopp in 1971. The magnetohydrodynamics equations in steady state were solved iteratively starting with an initial dipolar configuration. In 1990, the "Ulysses" probe was launched to study the solar wind from high solar latitudes. All prior observations had been made at or near the Solar System's ecliptic plane. In 2018, NASA launched the Parker Solar Probe, named in honor of Eugene Parker, on a mission to study the structure and dynamics of the solar corona, in an

title: Solar wind

text: injecting atmospheric matter into the solar wind. Geomagnetic storms result when the pressure of plasmas contained inside the magnetosphere is sufficiently large to inflate and thereby distort the geomagnetic field. Although Mars is larger than Mercury and four times farther from the Sun, it is thought that the solar wind has stripped away up to a third of its original atmosphere, leaving a layer 1/100th as dense as the Earth's. It is believed the mechanism for this atmospheric stripping is gas caught in bubbles of magnetic field, which are ripped off by solar winds. In 2015 the NASA Mars Atmosphere

title: Solar-wind hybrid turbine

text: wind turbine coated in solar cells that are able to absorb sunlight from any angle. While these designs are still being tested, scientists are having success, and these new hybrid units are a very promising project. Solar-wind hybrid turbine More and more research is being put into Solar-wind hybrid turbines, since predicting either wind or sun can be difficult. Many different designs are being tested to determine if there is an efficient way to combine the two. Installing solar panels on the already existing wind turbines was tested, but produced blinding rays of light that posed a threat to airplanes.

title: Solar wind

text: distance of more than a few solar radii from the Sun, the solar wind is supersonic and reaches speeds of 250 to 750 kilometers per second. The flow of the solar wind is no longer supersonic at the termination shock. The "Voyager 2" spacecraft crossed the shock more than five times between 30 August and 10 December 2007. "Voyager 2" crossed the shock about a billion kilometers closer to the Sun than the 13.5-billion-kilometer distance where "Voyager 1" came upon the termination shock. The spacecraft moved outward through the termination shock into the heliosheath and onward toward the interstellar medium.

title: Solar-wind hybrid turbine

text: Solar-wind hybrid turbine More and more research is being put into Solar-wind hybrid turbines, since predicting either wind or sun can be difficult. Many different designs are being tested to determine if there is an efficient way to combine the two. Installing solar panels on the already existing wind turbines was tested, but produced blinding rays of light that posed a threat to airplanes. These beams also had the potential to cause fires if concentrated. The solution to this was produce tinted solar panels that do not reflect as much light. Another proposed design was to have a vertical axis

title: Solar wind

text: probably depends on the current velocity of the solar wind and the local density of the interstellar medium, but it is far outside Pluto's orbit. Scientists hope to gain perspective on the heliopause from data acquired through the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission, launched in October 2008. Fox, Karen C. (2012) "NASA Study Using Cluster Reveals New Insights Into Solar Wind" NASA. S.Cuperman and N. Metzler, Role of fluctuations in the interplanetary magnetic field on the heat conduction in the Solar Wind.J.Geophys. Res. 78 (16), 3167-3168, 1973. S. Cuperman and N. Metzler. Astrophys. J., 182 (3), 961-975, 1973. S. Cuperman

title: Solar Wind Composition Experiment

text: the exposure the foil was detached from the telescopic pole, placed in a Teflon bag, and brought back to Earth for analysis. The experiment was successful and provided accurate He, Ne and Ar isotopic compositions of the solar wind. Solar Wind Composition Experiment The Solar Wind Composition Experiment (SWC) was an experiment deployed on the moon during the Apollo program (Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15 and 16). The aim was to measure and sample the solar wind outside the Earth's magnetosphere. It was the first definitive isotopic measurements of solar material. The SWC was proposed and designed by a Swiss

title: Solar wind

text: first directly observed the solar wind and measured its strength, using hemispherical ion traps. The discovery, made by Konstantin Gringauz, was verified by "Luna 2", "Luna 3" and by the more distant measurements of "Venera 1". Three years later a similar measurement was performed by Neugebauer and collaborators using the "Mariner 2" spacecraft. In the late 1990s, the Ultraviolet Coronal Spectrometer (UVCS) instrument on board the SOHO spacecraft observed the acceleration region of the fast solar wind emanating from the poles of the Sun and found that the wind accelerates much faster than can be accounted for by thermodynamic expansion

title: Solar wind

text: and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission measured the rate of atmospheric stripping caused by the magnetic field carried by the solar wind as it flows past Mars, which generates an electric field, much as a turbine on Earth can be used to generate electricity. This electric field accelerates electrically charged gas atoms, called ions, in Mars' upper atmosphere and shoots them into space. The MAVEN mission measured the rate of atmospheric stripping at about 100 grams (≈1/4 lb) per second. Mercury, the nearest planet to the Sun, bears the full brunt of the solar wind, and since its atmosphere is vestigial

title: Solar Wind Composition Experiment

text: Solar Wind Composition Experiment The Solar Wind Composition Experiment (SWC) was an experiment deployed on the moon during the Apollo program (Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15 and 16). The aim was to measure and sample the solar wind outside the Earth's magnetosphere. It was the first definitive isotopic measurements of solar material. The SWC was proposed and designed by a Swiss team headed by Johannes Geiss and Peter Eberhardt of the University of Bern and Peter Signer of the Swiss Institute of Technology. It was manufactured by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the University of Bern. The experiment was

title: Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer

text: Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) is a planned joint venture mission between the European Space Agency and the Chinese Academy of Sciences to study the interaction between Earth's magnetosphere and the solar wind, while simultaneously monitoring the magnetosphere's plasma environment. Launch is expected in 2023. SMILE will be equipped to simultaneously capture images and movies of the magnetopause, polar cusps, and aurora. Traditionally, satellites have taken local measurements of different regions to build up a global picture of the magnetosphere. However, a recent discovery that the magnetosphere emits X-rays will allow SMILE

title: Solar wind

text: of material and magnetic flux from the Sun's atmosphere, known as a coronal mass ejection. On the following day, a geomagnetic storm was observed, and Carrington suspected that there might be a connection, which is now attributed to the arrival of the coronal mass ejection in near-Earth space and its subsequent interaction with the Earth's magnetosphere. George FitzGerald later suggested that matter was being regularly accelerated away from the Sun and was reaching the Earth after several days. In 1910 British astrophysicist Arthur Eddington essentially suggested the existence of the solar wind, without naming it, in a footnote to an

title: Wind (spacecraft)

text: Building 14 at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "Wind" data can be accessed using the SPEDAS software. "Wind" is the sister ship to GGS "Polar". The aim of the International Solar-Terrestrial Physics Science Initiative is to understand the behavior of the solar-terrestrial plasma environment, in order to predict how the Earth's atmosphere will respond to changes in solar wind conditions. "Wind" objective is to measure the properties of the solar wind before it reaches the Earth. The "Wind" spacecraft has an array of instruments including: Konus, the "Wind" Magnetic Field Investigation (MFI), the Solar Wind and Suprathermal Ion

title: Solar wind

text: very hot at large distances. Since gravity weakens as distance from the Sun increases, the outer coronal atmosphere escapes supersonically into interstellar space. Furthermore, Parker was the first person to notice that the weakening effect of the gravity has the same effect on hydrodynamic flow as a de Laval nozzle: it incites a transition from subsonic to supersonic flow. Opposition to Parker's hypothesis on the solar wind was strong. The paper he submitted to "The Astrophysical Journal" in 1958 was rejected by two reviewers. It was saved by the editor Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. In January 1959, the Soviet spacecraft "Luna 1"

title: Solar phenomena

text: of 1.4–1.6 K and a composition that is a close match to the corona. The fast solar wind has a typical velocity of 750 km/s, a temperature of 8 K and nearly matches the photosphere's. The slow solar wind is twice as dense and more variable in intensity than the fast solar wind. The slow wind has a more complex structure, with turbulent regions and large-scale organization. Both the fast and slow solar wind can be interrupted by large, fast-moving bursts of plasma called interplanetary CMEs, or ICMEs. They cause shock waves in the thin plasma of the heliosphere, generating

text: 2015, the mission entered initial studies for concept readiness, and final approval was given for the mission by the ESA Science Programme Committee in November 2015. A Request For Information (RFI) on provisions for the payload module was announced on 18 December 2015. The objective was to collect information from potential providers to assess low risk payload module requirements given stated interest in the mission, in preparation for the Invitation to Tender in 2016. The Mission System Requirements Review was completed in October 2018, and ESA Mission Adoption is expected in March 2019. Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer Solar

title: Solar Wind Composition Experiment

text: partially funded by the Swiss Government. The SWC experiment consisted of a 1 X 4.6-foot sheet of ultra-pure aluminum and platinum metal foils erected on the moon's surface with a telescopic pole. The sheet was to be exposed to the Sun as to measure the ion types and energies of the solar wind on the lunar surface. The time exposure was 77 minutes on Apollo 11, 18 h and 42 minutes on Apollo 12, 21 hours on Apollo 14, 41 hours and 8 minutes on Apollo 15, and 45 h and 5 minutes on Apollo 16. At the end of

title: Solar power in Mexico

text: hydro and geothermal received no awards, and wind power won a smaller share than solar. As of 2017, thanks to the Long-Term Energy Auctions, solar PV energy is expected to increase to 6% in 2018 and 13% for 2019. Historically, the main applications of solar energy technologies in Mexico have been for non-electric active solar system applications for space heating, water heating and drying crops. As in most countries, wind power development preceded solar power initially, due to the lower installation cost. Since solar power is not available during the night, and because wind power tends to be complementary to

title: Wind power

text: can create a power system that has the potential to meet power supply needs reliably. Integrating ever-higher levels of renewables is being successfully demonstrated in the real world: Solar power tends to be complementary to wind. On daily to weekly timescales, high pressure areas tend to bring clear skies and low surface winds, whereas low pressure areas tend to be windier and cloudier. On seasonal timescales, solar energy peaks in summer, whereas in many areas wind energy is lower in summer and higher in winter. Thus the seasonal variation of wind and solar power tend to cancel each other somewhat.

title: Solar power in California

text: & Electric, on the other hand, generated only 11.9% of its electricity from renewable sources in 2010. As of July 2014, California had 7,808 MW of solar and 5,830 MW of wind farms. California adopted feed-in tariffs, a tool similar to what Europe has been using, to encourage the solar power industry. Proposals were raised aiming to create a small-scale solar market in California that brings the benefits of the German market, such as distributed generation, which avoids the need for transmission because power is generated close to where it is used, and avoid the drawbacks such as excessively high

title: Polar wind

text: the earth along open magnetic field lines near the magnetic poles (the 'polar wind'), is one possible solution to the paradox. Further research came from the Retarding Ion Mass Spectrometer instrument on the Dynamics Explorer spacecraft, in the 1980s. Recently, the SCIFER sounding rocket was launched into the plasma heating region of the fountain. Polar wind The polar wind or plasma fountain is a permanent outflow of plasma from the polar regions of Earth's magnetosphere, caused by the interaction between the solar wind and the Earth's atmosphere. The solar wind ionizes gas molecules in the upper atmosphere to such high

title: Emu Downs Wind Farm

text: or grid connection point. The solar farm has 75,000 photovoltaic solar panels on a 70-hectare site adjacent to the wind farm. It cost (including a federal government grant of ) and began operation in December 2017. The output of both the solar and wind farms is contracted to Synergy until 2030. Emu Downs Wind Farm The Emu Downs Wind Farm () is a 79.2 MW wind farm in Western Australia. It was a joint development between Stanwell Corporation and Griffin Energy. The site is approximately 200 kilometres north of Perth, near Cervantes. Construction of the $180 million project commenced in

title: Stellar-wind bubble

text: Stellar-wind bubble A stellar-wind bubble is a cavity light years across filled with hot gas blown into the interstellar medium by the high-velocity (several thousand km/s) stellar wind from a single massive star of type O or B. Weaker stellar winds also blow bubble structures, which are also called astrospheres. The heliosphere blown by the solar wind, within which all the major planets of the Solar System are embedded, is a small example of a stellar-wind bubble. Stellar-wind bubbles have a two-shock structure. The freely-expanding stellar wind hits an inner termination shock, where its kinetic energy is thermalized, producing 10

title: Solar power in Australia

text: of Kerang in north-west Victoria. It is the first large-scale solar farm to be constructed in Victoria. Western Australia's first major large scale solar farm, the Greenough River Solar farm, is at Walkaway, 70 km SE of Geraldton. It was opened in October 2012. The 10MW field has 150,000 solar panels. The 20 MW Emu Downs solar farm became the largest solar farm in WA when opened in March 2018. Emu Downs solar farm is co-located with the Emu Downs Wind Farm. The proposed Asian Renewable Energy Hub would include 3,500MW of solar power along with 7500MW of wind power.

title: Wind power

text: In 2007 the Institute for Solar Energy Supply Technology of the University of Kassel pilot-tested a combined power plant linking solar, wind, biogas and hydrostorage to provide load-following power around the clock and throughout the year, entirely from renewable sources. Wind power forecasting methods are used, but predictability of any particular wind farm is low for short-term operation. For any particular generator there is an 80% chance that wind output will change less than 10% in an hour and a 40% chance that it will change 10% or more in 5 hours. However, studies by Graham Sinden (2009) suggest that,

title: Solar power in Wyoming

text: Solar power in Wyoming Solar power in Wyoming has the potential to generate 72 million MWh/yr. Wyoming used 12 million MWh in 1999. Wyoming is one of the country's windiest states and has the potential to generate 883 million MWh/yr from wind power. Solar and wind power tend to complement each other, with more solar power available in summer and during the day, and more wind power available at night and during the winter. Net metering is available to all consumers generating up to 25 kW. IREC best practices, based on experience, recommends no limits to net metering, individual or

title: Solar bus

text: world's largest hydrogen-powered bus fleet and is intended to use hydrogen generated from solar and wind energy. Solar bus A solar bus or solar-charged bus is a bus which is powered exclusively or mainly by solar energy. A solar-powered bus service is referred to as a solar bus service. The use of the term "solar bus" normally implies that solar energy is used not only for powering electric equipment on the bus, but also for the propulsion of the vehicle. Existing solar buses are battery electric buses or (in the case of hybrid solar buses) hybrid buses equipped with batteries

title: Mass Megawatts Wind Power

text: Mass Megawatts Wind Power Mass Megawatts Wind Power, Inc. is a company that produces wind turbines and sells wind-generated electricity. The company intends to build and operate wind energy power plants and plans to sell the electricity to the electric power exchange. Mass Megawatts Wind Power was founded on May 27, 1997 and is headquartered in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States. As well as developing its own proprietary wind power systems it also engages in distributing wind generated electricity it purchases wholesale. In late 2014, the company announced plans to enter the American solar power market. The Solar Tracking System (STS)

title: Solar sail

text: in the radio frequencies of interest, including visible light. Pekka Janhunen from FMI has invented a type of solar sail called the electric solar wind sail. Mechanically it has little in common with the traditional solar sail design. The sails are replaced with straightened conducting tethers (wires) placed radially around the host ship. The wires are electrically charged to create an electric field around the wires. The electric field extends a few tens of metres into the plasma of the surrounding solar wind. The solar electrons are reflected by the electric field (like the photons on a traditional solar sail).

title: Polar wind

text: Polar wind The polar wind or plasma fountain is a permanent outflow of plasma from the polar regions of Earth's magnetosphere, caused by the interaction between the solar wind and the Earth's atmosphere. The solar wind ionizes gas molecules in the upper atmosphere to such high energy that some of them reach escape velocity and pour into space. A considerable percentage of these ions remain bound inside Earth's magnetic field, where they form part of the radiation belts. The term was coined in 1968 in a pair of articles by Banks and Holzer and by Ian Axford. Since the process

title: Stellar wind

text: dust condensing in the upper atmosphere of the stars. Massive stars of types O and B have stellar winds with lower mass loss rates (formula_2 solar masses per year) but very high velocities (v > 1–2000 km/s). Such winds are driven by radiation pressure on the resonance absorption lines of heavy elements such as carbon and nitrogen. These high-energy stellar winds blow stellar wind bubbles. G-type stars like the Earth's Sun have a wind driven by their hot, magnetized corona. The Sun's wind is called the solar wind. These winds consist mostly of high-energy electrons and protons (about 1 keV)

title: Solar power in Texas

text: Solar power in Texas Solar power in Texas, along with wind power, have the potential to allow Texas to remain an energy-exporting state. Texas has the largest solar and wind potential in the country. The largest which will produce 110 MWac / 133.10 MWdc, named Alamo 6, is under construction still in McCamey, Upton County, Texas. Alamo 6 was sold for $385 million to Warren Buffett in January 2017. The largest solar farm in production in Texas is the 157 MW Roserock Solar which came online in September 2016, and next is 106 MW Alamo 7 which came online in

title: Polar wind

text: by which the ionospheric plasma flows away from the Earth along magnetic field lines is similar to the flow of solar plasma away from the sun's corona (the solar wind), Axford suggested the term "polar wind." The idea for the polar wind originated with the desire to solve the paradox of the terrestrial helium budget. This paradox consists of the fact that helium in the Earth's atmosphere seems to be produced (via radioactive decay of uranium and thorium) faster than it is lost by escaping from the upper atmosphere. The realization that some helium could be ionized, and therefore escape

title: Solar power in Wyoming

text: aggregate, and perpetual roll over of kWh credits. Installing a 5 kW solar array could cost $20,000 but is expected to pay for itself in 15 years, and go on to return a $15,166 profit over its expected 25 year life. Solar power in Wyoming Solar power in Wyoming has the potential to generate 72 million MWh/yr. Wyoming used 12 million MWh in 1999. Wyoming is one of the country's windiest states and has the potential to generate 883 million MWh/yr from wind power. Solar and wind power tend to complement each other, with more solar power available in summer

title: Solar power in Florida

text: days and at night, or provide adequate grid energy storage. Most of the potential is from photovoltaics, which provides no storage. The state has some potential for concentrated solar power, but the potential is estimated at 130 MW. Taller, 140 meter hub height wind turbines allow up to 153,485 MW of wind turbines in Florida. Solar power in Florida Solar power in Florida has been increasing, as the cost of solar power systems using photovoltaics (PV) has decreased in recent years. Florida has low electricity costs compared with other states, which makes individual solar investment less attractive. Florida ranks ninth

title: North Carolina Solar Center

text: Solar Center runs the Students Making Advancements in Renewable Transportation Technologies (SMARTT) program that provides them a cooperative, hands-on learning experience building a street-legal electric vehicle. For middle schools, the program runs the nationwide Junior Solar Sprint in the fall that challenges young students to learn about solar technologies and build solar cars. and the N.C. Sustainable Building Design Competition in order to give students at all levels firsthand experience working with green technologies. The N.C. Solar Center has also designed a wind energy workshop for teachers that want to integrate wind energy and building wind turbines into a course.

title: Pavagada Solar Park

text: January 2018. Pavagada Solar Park had a total commissioned capacity of 600 MW by 1 March 2018. In March 2017, Karnataka Energy Minister DK Shivakumar told the "Bangalore Mirror" that the government was looking to generate wind energy by setting up windmills in Pavagada. Preliminary estimates from the KREDL indicate a potential wind power generation of 250-300 MW. Pavagada Solar Park Pavagada Solar Park is a solar park spread over a total area of in Pavagada taluk, Tumkur district, Karnataka. 600 MW of power was commissioned by 31 January 2018. and a further 1,400 MW are planned. The total investment

title: Solar wind

text: confine the plasma and transport it into the narrow necks of the coronal funnels, which are located only 20,000 kilometers above the photosphere. The plasma is released into the funnel when these magnetic field lines reconnect. The wind exerts a pressure at 1 AU typically in the range of 1–6 nPa (1–6 N/m), although it can readily vary outside that range. The ram pressure is a function of wind speed and density. The formula is P = m * n * V= 1.6726 * n * V where m is the proton mass, pressure P is in nPa (nanopascals), n

title: Huxley Hill Wind Farm

text: Huxley Hill Wind Farm Huxley Hill Wind Farm (also known as the King Island Wind Farm) is a wind power station at King Island, Tasmania, Australia, of around 1600 residents, owned by Hydro Tasmania, which supplements the four diesel generators with a combined capacity of 6 MW at Currie Power Station. King Island also has a 100 kW solar capacity provided with monocrystaline solar panels on dual-axis arrays. The wind farm started generating in 1998, initially with three 250 kW Nordex N26 wind turbines at a cost of $2.5 M ($3,300/kW), then in 2003 with two 850 kW Vestas Turbines,

title: Solar car racing

text: or integrated sails to harness wind energy. Races including the WSC and ASC, consider wind energy to be solar energy, so their race regulations allow this practice. Aerodynamic drag is the main source of losses on a solar race car. The aerodynamic drag of a vehicle is the product of the frontal area and its "C". For most solar cars the frontal area is 0.75 to 1.3 m. While "C" as low as 0.10 have been reported, 0.13 is more typical. This needs a great deal of attention to detail. The vehicle's mass is also a significant factor. A light

title: Solar phenomena

text: Solar phenomena Solar phenomena are the natural phenomena occurring within the magnetically heated outer atmospheres in the Sun. These phenomena take many forms, including solar wind, radio wave flux, energy bursts such as solar flares, coronal mass ejection or solar eruptions, coronal heating and sunspots. These phenomena are apparently generated by a helical dynamo near the center of the Sun's mass that generates strong magnetic fields and a chaotic dynamo near the surface that generates smaller magnetic field fluctuations. The total sum of all solar fluctuations is referred to as solar variation. The collective effect of all solar variations within

title: Wind power in Australia

text: owned by Windlab Limited, Eurus Energy and landholders neighbouring the project and has 6 turbines generating up to 19.4 MW. From 2017, Windlab will begin building the Kiata Wind Farm, a 30MW wind energy project located 50km North West of Horsham, Victoria. Windlab is also developing the Kennedy energy park in North Queensland near Townsville, in two stages: Up to 40 - 50 MW of wind and 40 - 50 MW of solar in the first phase and up to 600 MW of wind and 600 MW of solar in the second phase. Windlab has since become a full wind

title: Wind (spacecraft)

text: MFI experiments were designed to measure the electric and magnetic fields observed in the solar wind. All together, the "Wind" spacecraft's suite of instruments allows for a complete description of plasma phenomena in the solar wind plane of the ecliptic. The electric field detectors of the "Wind" WAVES instrument are composed of three orthogonal electric field dipole antennas, two in the spin plane (roughly the plane of the ecliptic) of the spacecraft and one along the spin axis. The complete WAVES suite of instruments includes five total receivers including: Low Frequency FFT receiver called FFT (0.3 Hz to 11 kHz),

title: Wind power in Ohio

text: entertainment complex receives 1.5 million visitors per year, and the wind turbine appears regularly on local news broadcasts and Cleveland Browns NFL broadcasts, making it one of the world's most-viewed wind turbines. The wind turbine originally operated on a wind farm in Denmark, which resold the wind turbine while repowering to newer, larger wind turbines. The ground around the wind turbine features an art display entitled "Shadow and Light". The display includes walkways that align with the wind turbine's shadow at solar noon and two hours, eleven minutes after solar noon, respectively. On the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, the wind

title: North Carolina Solar Center

text: in the Southeast. The Renewable Energy program area provides technical assistance to N.C. stakeholders in solar, biomass, geothermal, and wind technologies. The N.C. Solar Center also completes single-day feasibility assessments for governments, commercial sites, and industrial sites around the state about how they can integrate renewable energy into their existing energy systems. The Center has played a major role in several large renewable energy installations in the state, including SunEnergy1’s 2.4MW installation in Plymouth, a 20 kW hybrid wind-solar PV system operated in Smyrna, a 2.5 kW wind turbine in Coquina Beach, SAS’s 2.2 MW solar PV installation in Cary,

title: Solar phenomena

text: ejection (CME) is a massive burst of solar wind and magnetic fields rising above the solar corona. Near solar maxima, the Sun produces about three CMEs every day, whereas solar minima feature about one every five days. CMEs, along with solar flares of other origin, can disrupt radio transmissions and damage satellites and electrical transmission line facilities, resulting in potentially massive and long-lasting power outages. Coronal mass ejections often appear with other forms of solar activity, most notably solar flares, but no causal relationship has been established. Most weak flares do not have CMEs; most powerful ones do. Most ejections

title: Solar dryer

text: Solar dryer Solar dryers are devices that use solar energy to dry substances, especially food. There are two general types of solar dryers: Direct and indirect. Direct solar dryers expose the substance to be dehydrated to direct sunlight. Historically, food and clothing was dried in the sun by using lines, or laying the items on rocks or on top of tents. In Mongolia cheese and meat are still traditionally dried using the top of the ger (tent) as a solar dryer. In these systems the solar drying is assisted by the movement of the air (wind) that removes the more

title: Solar power in Spain

text: European countries in the development of capacity, although it retains its leading position in the deployment of solar thermal power. In May 2017, Spain held an auction for new renewable capacity to be online by 2020. Solar projects won only 1 MW of the 3000 MW awarded. After complaints by the solar industry which felt the auction terms favored wind power, another auction occurred in July. In this auction, solar projects received 3,909 MW and wind received 1,128 MW. Financing, land acquisition and solar panel price fluctuations could reduce the actual amount of solar power installed. Almost no new solar

title: Wind shear

text: winds at the surface become increasingly mixed with winds aloft due to insolation, or solar heating. Radiative cooling overnight further enhances wind decoupling between the winds at the surface and the winds above the boundary layer by calming the surface wind which increases wind shear. These wind changes force wind shear between the boundary layer and the wind aloft, and is most emphasized at night. In gliding, wind gradients just above the surface affect the takeoff and landing phases of flight of a glider. Wind gradient can have a noticeable effect on ground launches, also known as winch launches or

title: Wind power in Croatia

text: By the end of 2014 renewable energy in Croatia is expected to generate around 527MW from Wind and Solar alone or around 20% of all energy consumption from renewable energy source, reaching EU 2020 target for renewable energy and exceed that by a wide margin by 2020. At present rate of growth and planned investments over next 5-7 year period, energy generated from Wind and solar should easily reach 40% of total energy consumption in Croatia with 50% highly probable, achieving targets set by Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Austria. Wind power in Croatia Wind power in Croatia has

title: Solar powered stadiums

text: reusable. The Dragon stadium is not the only sports arena to become energy efficient. The Philadelphia Eagles of the NFL announced a new plan to make their stadium, Lincoln Financial Field, more energy efficient by the 2011-2012 season. Lincoln Financial Field will have 2,500 solar panels and 80 20-foot-high wind turbines installed, as well as a generator that runs on natural gas. Lincoln Financial Field will be the first stadium in the United States capable of generating all of its own electricity. The Eagles hired the Florida-based company Solar Blue to install their solar panels and wind turbines. The team

title: Solar System

text: ejections, disturbs the heliosphere, creating space weather and causing geomagnetic storms. The largest structure within the heliosphere is the heliospheric current sheet, a spiral form created by the actions of the Sun's rotating magnetic field on the interplanetary medium. Earth's magnetic field stops its atmosphere from being stripped away by the solar wind. Venus and Mars do not have magnetic fields, and as a result the solar wind is causing their atmospheres to gradually bleed away into space. Coronal mass ejections and similar events blow a magnetic field and huge quantities of material from the surface of the Sun. The

title: Wind power

text: be more than that cost. Germany has an installed capacity of wind and solar that can exceed daily demand, and has been exporting peak power to neighboring countries, with exports which amounted to some 14.7 billion kWh in 2012. A more practical solution is the installation of thirty days storage capacity able to supply 80% of demand, which will become necessary when most of Europe's energy is obtained from wind power and solar power. Just as the EU requires member countries to maintain 90 days strategic reserves of oil it can be expected that countries will provide electric power storage,

title: Capital Wind Farm

text: Capital Wind Farm The Capital Wind Farm near Bungendore is the largest wind farm in New South Wales. It is part of the Capital Renewable Energy Precinct, along with nearby Woodlawn Wind Farm and the Capital East Solar Demonstration Plant. Capital Wind Farm was built by international contractors Suzlon Energy for owner and operator Infigen Energy. Construction began in early 2008, and the wind farm became fully operational in October 2009. It is a 140.7 megawatt wind farm with 67 turbines. The Capital Wind Farm is around north east of Canberra, just southeast of Lake George and north of Bungendore.

title: Solar-powered pump

text: Solar-powered pump A solar-powered pump is a pump running on electricity generated by photovoltaic panels or the radiated thermal energy available from collected sunlight as opposed to grid electricity or diesel run water pumps. The operation of solar powered pumps is more economical mainly due to the lower operation and maintenance costs and has less environmental impact than pumps powered by an internal combustion engine (ICE). Solar pumps are useful where grid electricity is unavailable and alternative sources (in particular wind) do not provide sufficient energy. A photovoltaic solar powered pump system has three parts: The solar panels make up

title: Wind turbine

text: sources. Notably, the relative available output from wind and solar sources is often inversely proportional (balancing). Technology is also being developed to store excess energy, which can then make up for any deficits in supplies. Wind turbine A wind turbine, or alternatively referred to as a wind energy converter, is a device that converts the wind's kinetic energy into electrical energy. Wind turbines are manufactured in a wide range of vertical and horizontal axis. The smallest turbines are used for applications such as battery charging for auxiliary power for boats or caravans or to power traffic warning signs. Slightly larger

title: Solar chimney

text: solar energy heats the chimney and the air within it, creating an updraft of air in the chimney. The suction created at the chimney's base can be used to ventilate and cool the building below. In most parts of the world it is easier to harness wind power for such ventilation as with a windcatcher, but on hot windless days a Solar chimney can provide ventilation where otherwise there would be none. There are however a number of solar chimney variations. The basic design elements of a solar chimney are: A principle has been proposed for solar power generation, using

title: Solar phenomena

text: the outward sweep of magnetic fields in the solar wind, increased solar activity reduces C production. Atmospheric C concentration is lower during solar maxima and higher during solar minima. By measuring the captured C in wood and counting tree rings, production of radiocarbon relative to recent wood can be measured and dated. A reconstruction of the past 10,000 years shows that the C production was much higher during the mid-Holocene 7,000 years ago and decreased until 1,000 years ago. In addition to variations in solar activity, long term trends in carbon-14 production are influenced by changes in the Earth's geomagnetic

title: Solar cycle

text: and outer layers all the way through the corona and into the solar wind. Its spatiotemporal variations lead to various measurable solar phenomena. Other solar phenomena are closely related to the cycle, which serves as the energy source and dynamical engine for the former. Sunspots eventually decay, releasing magnetic flux in the photosphere. This flux is dispersed and churned by turbulent convection and solar large-scale flows. These transport mechanisms lead to the accumulation of magnetized decay products at high solar latitudes, eventually reversing the polarity of the polar fields (notice how the blue and yellow fields reverse in the Hathaway/NASA/MSFC

title: Solar power

text: alloy. Some media sources have reported that concentrated solar power plants have injured or killed large numbers of birds due to intense heat from the concentrated sunrays. This adverse effect does not apply to PV solar power plants, and some of the claims may have been overstated or exaggerated. A 2014-published life-cycle analysis of land use for various sources of electricity concluded that the large-scale implementation of solar and wind potentially reduces pollution-related environmental impacts. The study found that the land-use footprint, given in square meter-years per megawatt-hour (ma/MWh), was lowest for wind, natural gas and rooftop PV, with 0.26,

title: Solar Orbiter

text: Solar Orbiter Solar Orbiter (SolO) is a planned Sun-observing satellite, under development by the European Space Agency (ESA). The mission will be launched with an Atlas V from the Cape Canaveral AFS in Florida in February 2020. SolO is intended to perform detailed measurements of the inner heliosphere and nascent solar wind, and perform close observations of the polar regions of the Sun, which is difficult to do from Earth, both serving to answer the question "How does the Sun create and control the heliosphere?" Solar Orbiter will make observations of the Sun from an eccentric orbit moving as close

title: Solar chimney

text: of the air within the chimney will enhance convection, and hence airflow through the chimney. Openings of the vents in the chimney should face away from the direction of the prevailing wind. To further maximize the cooling effect, the incoming air may be led through underground ducts before it is allowed to enter the building. The solar chimney can be improved by integrating it with a trombe wall. The added advantage of this design is that the system may be reversed during the cold season, providing solar heating instead. A variation of the solar chimney concept is the solar attic.