NEWSNOTES

Better Solar-Storm Forecasting 14:27 U.T. 14:59 U.T.

Solar astronomers may have discov- days later at speeds in excess of one mil-
ered a robust technique for predicting lion kilometers per hour. The strongest
energetic ejections of material from the such events can disrupt power grids or
Sun’s surface. damage spacecraft in Earth orbit.
Coronal mass ejections, or CMEs, typ- On April 7, 1997, a forceful CME took
ically propel a billion tons of plasma place while two spacecraft were on watch:
from the Sun’s surface in less than a day. the Yohkoh satellite, which records X-ray to see any ejected particles that may be
When they occur on the Sun’s Earth- images of the Sun’s surface, and the Solar present. Just before SOHO detected the
ward side, CMEs can drive the expelled and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), explosion’s first signs, Yohkoh imaged an
particles toward our planet’s magneto- whose white-light coronagraph blocks the S-shaped “hot spot,” or active region, in
sphere, where they arrive three or four Sun’s overwhelmingly bright disk in order the southeastern quadrant of the solar
disk. Four hours later, when the CME
had largely run its course, the S-shaped
region, or sigmoid, had dramatically
changed form and faded somewhat. In a
1997 paper, Alphonse C. Sterling (Com-
putational Physics, Inc.) and Hugh S.
Hudson (Solar Physics Research Corpo-
ration) described these phenomena and
suggested that the region had changed
13:28:42 U.T. shape because magnetic fields had abrupt-
ly shifted, releasing plasma in the process.
Now a team led by Richard C. Canfield
(Montana State University) has con-
firmed the predictive power of the sig-
moids. In a March 9th NASA press brief-
ing, Canfield described a statistical study
of two years of Yohkoh images, which
showed that sigmoids indeed frequently
17:40:40 U.T.
precede CMEs, as suggested by the April
7, 1997, event. He also noted that their
The S-shaped “hot spot” (boxed) in this X-ray view of the Sun preceded a powerful solar storm predictive power is enhanced when as-
on April 7, 1997. After the solar outburst of charged particles took place (seen in the visible- tronomers know the sizes of the sunspots
light views at the tops of these pages), the region dramatically changed shape and faded as in the same magnetically active regions. If
well. This suggests that a magnetic-field loop abruptly shifted, releasing hot plasma and pro- the sunspots are relatively small, said
pelling it toward Earth. Yohkoh satellite images courtesy Richard Canfield. Canfield, then sigmoidal active regions

Probing the History of High-Redshift Helium

Two billion years after the Big Bang, something suddenly
happened to space.
The Big Bang’s nuclear reactions had produced only one heli-
um atom for every 10 of hydrogen. But the latter only had one
electron to lose to collisions and energetic photons, while the
former had two, with the second being much harder to remove.
Thus in the early universe’s rarefied intergalactic medium, heli-
um was by far the likeliest element to absorb photons of far-
ultraviolet light, which can knock off its remaining electron.
And despite the intergalactic medium’s unimaginably low densi-
ty (less than one helium atom per cubic meter), enough helium
was present to make the universe opaque to ultraviolet eyes.
Or so things stood until about two billion years after the Big
Bang, when galaxies were four times closer to one another (on
average) than they are today. But shortly thereafter, something
knocked the remaining electrons off most of the so-called He II
ions (those that had retained one electron). As a result, the
universe abruptly became transparent to far-ultraviolet light.
This is the scenario attested to by recent studies of quasar
spectra. The overwhelmingly bright nuclei of certain distant
galaxies, quasars serve as sensitive probes of any intergalactic
gases that lie between us and them (S&T: September 1997, page
28). Most recently, the Hubble Space Telescope’s second-genera-
tion spectrograph, STIS, has enabled Sara R. Heap (NASA/God-
dard Space Flight Center), Scott F. Anderson (University of
Washington), and their respective colleagues to map out He II
absorption in the spectra of two high-redshift quasars.
As Heap explains, it remains unproven what stripped the
early universe’s He II ions of their remaining electrons. But the
likeliest culprits are quasars themselves. These black-hole-
powered lighthouses produced copious ultraviolet light, and their
numbers began to dramatically increase when the universe was
roughly two billion years old (May issue, page 40). Nevertheless,
says NASA/Goddard coinvestigator Gerard M. Williger, “There
may be other sources which contribute too. This topic has been
debated for years and is a [subject] of active research.” One ob-
stacle — a shortage of bright, high-redshift quasars — may
soon be removed by projects like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

26 July 1999 Sky & Telescope ©1999 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
 15:21 U.T. 15:52 U.T.

SOHO IMAGES COURTESY ROBERT DUFFIN, NAVAL RESEARCH LABORATORY

are about four times as likely to erupt as

nonsigmoidal ones. But if the associated
sunspots are large, “the sigmoid is virtual-
ly certain to erupt as it passes across the
[Sun’s] disk.” Details appear in Geophysi-
cal Research Letters for March 15th.
For the time being, SOHO itself can
already provide three or four days’ warn-
ing of geomagnetic storms, since Earth-
targeting CMEs take that long to reach
us. However, the new X-ray-based diag-
nostic may add valuable lead time as
well as indicate the severity of an up-
coming storm. The sigmoid-CME con-
nection also holds theoretical signifi-
cance: according to veteran solar
astrophysicist David M. Rust (Johns
Hopkins University), it may shed light
on the dynamo that drives the 11-year
cycle of solar magnetic activity.

Advertisement
The Measure of Eros
Had things gone according to plan,
NASA’s Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous
spacecraft would now be snugly in
orbit around minor planet 433 Eros. But
last December 20th a botched rocket
firing caused the spacecraft to sail past
its target (March issue, page 18).The un-
intended flyby wasn’t devoid of scientif-
ic results, however. As reported by
Joseph Veverka (Cornell University) at
the Lunar and Planetary Science Con-
ference in Houston, Texas, last March,
NEAR’s best images resolve features on
Eros roughly 400 meters across. Overall,
the asteroid measures a very elongated
33 by 13 by 13 kilometers. In addition,
Veverka noted, the flyby was close
enough (3,827 km) and slow enough
(965 meters per second) to alter NEAR’s
trajectory very slightly. These deviations
were barely measurable by tracking sta-
tions, but they allowed Donald K. Yeo-
mans (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) to de-
termine that Eros has a mass of about 7
trillion tons. Its bulk density is about 2.5
grams per cubic centimeter — roughly
twice that of 253 Mathilde, whose inte-
rior is apparently very porous.

©1999 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. Sky & Telescope July 1999 27