NASA rocket to survey the solar system's windshield

Eleven billion miles away—more than four times the distance from us to Pluto—lies the boundary of our solar system's magnetic bubble, the heliopause. Here the Sun's magnetic field, stretching through space like an invisible ...

Magnetic nature of complex vortex-like structures

Recently, observation of new topological magnetic structures represented by skyrmions is expected to provide new paths in constructing spintronic devices. In magnetic bubbles, although these are "ancient" cylinder domains, ...

Earth's magnetosphere

Enveloping our planet and protecting us from the fury of the Sun is a giant bubble of magnetism called the magnetosphere. It deflects most of the solar material sweeping towards us from our star at 1 million miles per hour ...

Studying magnetic space explosions with NASA missions

Every day, invisible magnetic explosions are happening around Earth, on the surface of the sun and across the universe. These explosions, known as magnetic reconnection, occur when magnetic field lines cross, releasing stored ...

Cassini mission provides insight into Saturn

Scientists have found the first direct evidence for explosive releases of energy in Saturn's magnetic bubble using data from the Cassini spacecraft, a joint mission between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian ...

Fast solar wind causes aurora light shows

On the night of Oct. 8, 2015, a photographer in Harstad, Norway captured this image of the dancing northern lights. Auroras are created when fast-moving, magnetic solar material strikes Earth's magnetic bubble, the magnetosphere. ...

NASA's MMS formation will give unique look at magnetic reconnection

On July 9, 2015 the four spacecraft of NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale, or MMS, mission began flying in a pyramid shape for the first time. The four-sided pyramid shape—called a tetrahedron—means that scientists' observations ...

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