The Space Environment Center in Colorado is evenly split on the intensity of the next peak in solar storms. Solar storms are caused by solar flares spewing highly charged energy into the cosmos, an event called coronal mass ejection or sunspots. The 12 member panel believes that the next season will peak sometime between Oct, 2011 and August 2012 with moderately heavy to moderately light intensity. They expect to achieve a consensus over the next 6-12 months.

The average peak season for sun spot activity contains between 75 to 155 solars flares.

The five satellites that comprise the THEMIS project are set to launch today aboard a single rocket. The five rockets will study the magnetosphere of the earth for clues as to the nature of solar storms that damage satellites and electronic communications on earth. A short intro into the THEMIS project
A short intro into a similar European Space Agency Project

NASA will be launching five satellites to study geomagnetic substorms. The project is title THEMIS or 'Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms'. Sometimes acronyms are very useful. The project will investigate how solar winds interact with the magnetosphere. It sounds very similar to the previous European project reported on earlier at Aceize.

Solar Wind propagates with random fluctuations, leading to turbulence in space. This study was conducted using 4 satellites to plot turbulence in 3D. The four satellites travel in a pyramidal shape at the leading edge of the earth's magnetosphere. It is not clear who or when the study was conducted, but I am guessing the Institute of Geophysics and Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany had something to do with it. The experiment has been ongoing since at least 2002.

Jonathan Makela from the University of Illinois is working to improve the prediction of weather conditions in the ionosphere. They are primarily looking at how solar flares effect the ionosphere. Changes in the ionosphere effect satellite communications and earth based electrical grids. Observations on the ionsphere are being done from Cornell and Virginia Tech Universities by monitoring the airglow of the earth's atmosphere for changes.

The French have launched a 'planet-hunter' telescope called Corot. This telescope will measure fluctuations of light received from stars to detect when planets of 'all sizes' move between the star and the telescope. The article contradicts itself on this point, however. At one point, they state that planets found will be rocky planets "a few times the size of earth". This method of planet hunting is currently used on Earth, however, from earth based telescopes the planets must be very large to detect the drop in light from a star. Researchers believe that they will be able to detect much smaller planets using this method. Let's hope so, I need some elbow room.

MSNBC reports on a study about the swirling disc theory of planetary and star formation. In this particular report they are concerned with double star systems.

The giant telescope located on the Big Island of Hawaii will be used to research the Black Hole at the 'center' of the milky way galaxy. In order to do this, the NSF has given a $2 million dollar grant to the observatory. The money will be used to upgrade the interferometer system of the telescope. The improvements will improve the ability of the Keck Observatory for "measuring the position, velocity and acceleration of stars near the massive black hole at the center of our own galaxy, allowing us to look for the distortions in space predicted by general relativity," said Peter Wizinowich,

The Bootes constellation was experiencing some turbulence some 4 billion years ago. No worries, though, there are currently no scehduled flights through the Bootes constellation, nor were there any flights reported 4 billion years ago. Also, this poses no threat to Earth's nascent space colonization plans, as the explosion took place almost 4 billion light years away (and 4 billion years ago).

The turbulence is due to a star being torn apart by a black hole. Pretty cool stuff, I wish I knew a little more about gravity and the physics behind the 'plosion.

Here's the